Gentle reader,
We write in haste to alert you to a public hearing happening in Downtown Los Angeles later this morning, Tuesday 5/27/2025 at 9:30am. Where? At 201 North Figueroa Street, room 900. Here’s the agenda and you’ll find a simple phone call action item below for Pacific Dining Car fans.
As we reported last month when they voted to compel demolition of the AIDS services center Hernandez House at 1833 N. Taft Avenue, the Board of Building and Safety Commissioners (BBSC) will be considering more of their unappealable vacant building abatement rulings, and this time more historic Hollywood houses and the Pacific Dining Car are in the crosshairs.
Yes, after being left unsecured for several years, Pacific Dining Car burned repeatedly and the original dining room and bar area were demolished in March by LAFD. However, we were there during the demolition, and alerted Heavy Equipment Captain Rich Diede that the 1934 steel kitchen behind the badly burned faux train dining car structure was individually protected under the landmark ordinance.
Captain Diede stopped the work, went inside and confirmed that the kitchen had survived the fire. Then he directed his team to knock wood and plaster walls down around it, encapsulating the landmarked kitchen within the wreckage, where it is today.
We will be asking Office of Historic Resources to advocate with the BBSC to direct the property owner to salvage the kitchen, which is all that remains of Historic Cultural Monument #1284—or if the City ends up completing the demolition, that the City salvages it.
Our sincere hope is that a modern restaurateur who has a love of old Los Angeles and the Pacific Dining Car will see this newsletter and arrange with the property owner to take possession of the legendary kitchen and put it back into service.
If you agree that the landmarked Pacific Dining Car kitchen should not go to the dump, you can call OHR at (213) 847-3676 before the 9:30am hearing and ask staff to attend and ask that it be saved.
This is agenda item #C1: PUBLIC NUISANCE HEARINGS regarding the abatement of vacant buildings or structures that are open to unauthorized entry, pursuant to Section 91.8904.2 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code. - 1300 WEST 6TH STREET, A.K.A. 1308, 1310, 1312 & 1314 WEST 6TH STREET; BOARD FILE NO. 250034.
Next up on the agenda are side by side historic multifamily houses at 1744 and 1750 N. Wilton in Hollywood—just a block from Hernandez House on Taft that is now slated for demolition.
1744 N. Wilton Place was a Craftsman style duplex from 1911, which sold for $1,550,000 in 2023 and has been a nightmare for the neighbors ever since. It was demolished by LAFD after the most recent of several fires, with conflicting stories about owner Lindon Shiao’s efforts to secure it. BBSC is still holding a hearing, at agenda item #C2.
1750 N. Wilton Place is a 1913 duplex with a 1928 single unit in back, vacated of tenants under the Ellis Act in 2019. Now boarded up, it too, has been regularly broken into. This house and the back unit could be restored and used as housing once more, but it seems likely that the commissioners will call for their demolition. This is is agenda item #C3.
Not on the agenda is the other burned, derelict and demolition-threatened house at 1816 N. Wilton Place, which the City owns, promised to restore as a childcare center, yet has kept vacant for nearly 20 years, staged as a sleazy filming location you can book on Film LA. This is so depraved that it left us breathless. [Update 6/4/25: since this newsletter was published, Film LA has removed the listing for booking “Wilton Place.” Here is the most recent version of the page captured by the Internet Archive.]
It can feel pretty lousy, tracking the good houses that speculators snap up for much more than they are worth as decent housing for Angelenos, usually with the intent of knocking them down for new construction. It feels worse when they don’t even get demolition permits, but let vandals, unhoused people, LAFD or LADBS do their dirty work for them.
These unofficial demolitions don’t include remediation measures to keep dust down and stop toxins from spreading all over the neighborhood, and they don’t allow for salvage of useful materials or for whole houses to be moved to Altadena, where they are very much wanted by underinsured families who have lost their homes.
We figure the least we can do, is to bear witness and continue to advocate, because these houses matter—and so do the pretty blocks that suffer so much because instead of neighbors, residents have absentee speculators who don’t secure their investments, and a City that lets them get away with it.
It could end tomorrow, and one day, it will.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) •Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury, Basements, Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/21) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (7/26) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (8/9) • Weird West Adams / Elmer McCurdy Museum (8/16) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (8/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (8/30) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (9/6) • Film Noir / Real Noir (9/20) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (9/27)
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