Gentle reader,
Up on the roof of the Dutch Chocolate Shop in Downtown Los Angeles, a functional piece of the city’s past called us to make the short video above.
Lightning is the name of this handsome and functional fire hose rack, which was patented on January 3, 1911. It was a very different world then… or was it?
At a time when L.A.’s historic metal artifacts large and small are being stolen by organized gangs and melted for scrap, and the city does nothing to stop the illegal trade, it’s refreshing to encounter a bit of vintage metal still in service in the wild, and we wanted to share it with you. Those hanging bars, which we used as a wind chime, are meant to drop down as a canvas fire hose is unfurled for use.
We don’t know when this one was installed atop the landmark Finney Wilton Building, one level above the mysterious quack medical clinic. However, the Oakland-made fixture became available in the 1900s, and was still being advertised to the architectural trade in the early 1940s.
Also when we were up on the roof, we captured a brand new vista: the PerLA on Broadway condominium tower two blocks north, framed by a hole in the armature for the Victorian-era venting system.
As we learned at Ray Chan’s public corruption trial, the reduced size of this new building was influenced by developer Shanghai Construction having balked at councilmember Jose Huizar’s pressure to deliver bribe money.
It’s startling to realize that had we not attended some of the trial and heard this testimony first-hand, we would never know why PerLA respects the historic Broadway National Register District height limit pattern with its setback tower. But we had to attend, since the Los Angeles Times was barely covering the trial. And now that we know, it completely transforms how we see the building and its place in the Downtown L.A. ecosystem.
Another tall building on L.A.’s mind appears in a short video we shot in the parking lot opposite the old Examiner newspaper building, across from the new Proper Hotel with its illegal beer billboard that eclipsed the “protected” ghost signs called out in the building’s landmark designation. If you squint, you’ll see the colored script up and down the visible portion of Oceanwide Plaza, aka the graffiti towers.
In the 1940s, the Examiner was owned by the Hearst syndicate and filled with dogged reporters, colorful personalities who played a central role in investigating and illuminating the life and death of Beth Short, victim in the still unsolved 1947 Black Dahlia murder. We know so much more about the city due to their reporting.
This crime, and several others in which vulnerable Angelenos fell through the cracks of bad city policies, are featured on tomorrow’s walking tour, Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases. Join us to visit sites of violent death spanning almost 75 years, to discover the beauty and decay of the central city, and to honor spirits that cling to the places where they breathed their last. We’re joined by crime buddy Joan “Red” Renner, and it’s bound to be a blast.
And you’re invited to join us for a rare weekday event, on Monday April 22 at East Los Angeles College, an Earth Day celebration including the planting of the first clone sapling propagated after the 400-year-old Eagle Tree fell in Compton!
Eagle Tree Clone #1 has been nurtured by the Theodore Payne Foundation, and will be planted at 1pm Monday at ELAC as an Earth Day project by Professor Stephen Koletty’s Environmental Science Lab students. The sapling will be displayed by the Earth Sciences (G8) Building and then carried to its new site, the boundary lawn area at the front of the campus along Avenida Cesar Chavez just south of Parking Structure 3 next to the ELAC kiosk. The public is welcome to attend. On campus parking will be free on Earth Day. Parking Structure 4, on the corner of West Floral and Collegian Avenue, is nearest to the G8 Building. Additional details are below.
We'll be there, as will representatives of North East Trees, who have joined the project as a community partner to help care for the growing saplings, and to aid in their planting through the wider community.
Come to campus to help inaugurate a new chapter for one of L.A.’s most historic and enormous trees, and see the remarkable collection of oddities that we unearthed from inside the massive silt cone left standing when the hollow monster / mother tree fell.
Like our friend, Dr. Don Hodel always tells us: we have to save the trees if we’re going to save ourselves!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, 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. You can share this post to win subscriber perks. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (Sat. 4/20) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/27) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 4/28) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (Sat. 5/4) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (Sat. 5/11) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (Sat. 5/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sat. 5/25) • POP – Preserving Our Past (Sat. 6/1) • Westlake Park (Sat. 6/8) • Highland Park Arroyo (Sat. 6/15) • Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 6/29) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 7/13) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (7/27) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (8/31)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Worrying signs at the beautiful M. Flax Artist's Materials Building on MacArthur Park: new owners from Florida seek a demolition permit instead of repairing the fire damage. Will the city honor the redevelopment survey, reject demolition and protect this cultural landmark? We fear it won’t: the demolition permit was issued on Wednesday! Demolition would reward years of illegal construction, neglect and vacancy with the complete loss of a cultural and architectural landmark. However, there is still hope. Filed prior to the approval of the demolition permit is an ongoing LADBS code violation investigation and Substandard Order effective 3/8/2024. This calls for the property owner to 1) Repair or replace deteriorated or defective members of ceilings, roofs, ceiling and roof supports or [other horizontal] members, and 2) Obtain all required building permits, inspections and approvals to repair the structure from the fire damage. We would very much like to see the city enforce this order, and urge others who care to join us in asking OHR Director Ken Bernstein (ken.bernstein@lacity.org) and Sr. Architect Lambert Giessinger (lambert.giessinger@lacity.org) to halt demolition and preserve M. Flax today!
Here's a lousy way to learn of a new L.A. bungalow court to add to our map. J.T. the L.A. Storyteller reports in Making A Neighborhood on Giovanni Rodriguez' Kafkaesque eviction from his home of 29 years. Such cruel efficiency…. We're not the only bungalow court fans mapping these 100 year old multi-family compounds. Brian Cox shares his bungalow bike routes in Pasadena and the wider San Gabriel Valley. If you go exploring, please share your favorites.
Empty Los Angeles casts her wrathful eye over Historic Filipinotown and asks of the gorgeous, scorched and lonesome 109-111 South Union Avenue: Why Is This Cottage Empty? And preservation pal Clay Bush stopped by and found Gwynn Wilson's Olympic cottage has been fenced. Now let's see it restored and occupied!
When Wayfarers Chapel was constructed (1949-51), large, flat oceanfront lots were already a scarce commodity. It seems unlikely that the sliding landmark could afford a new site in the 2024 market—unless it's on public land, and becomes a public venue.
A new app from Museum of Neon Art tells the stories of five iconic So Cal signs that are happily preserved in place—including the very old, rediscovered AdoHR Milk Farm repurposed by Howlin' Ray's Pasadena.
A lovely story about the tenant in James Dean's rent stabilized, haunted apartment at 19 West 68th Street, who since 1974 has operated as a volunteer tour guide and caretaker. Long may he pay less than the money laundering inflated market rate!
The co-owner of the squatted Tudor cottage at 507 Larchmont sounds off at the Neighborhood Council. This is all the city's fault, for empowering deranged flippers to wreck heritage properties and our communities. Still—what a jerk!
Whoa! How did nobody know that the Los Angeles County Library Headquarters suffered $26 Million in fire damage in November 2021? All we're seeing is this Stu Mundel eye in the sky tweet. See agenda item 25 for more.
Despite the L.A. Times smear campaign that doesn't jibe with what we see at their well-managed properties, the receiver says AIDS Healthcare Foundation is the best buyer for six blighted Skid Row Housing Trust buildings. This is great news for Downtown.
New in the Esotouric shop: The Nickel T-shirt, honoring the lost SRO district and fun zone that ran from Main to Alameda along East Fifth Street. If you were On The Nickel, you were having a wild time. With a little luck, you'd even remember it in the morning.
Oh yeah! Historic-Cultural Monument application just submitted for Astro Family Restaurant!
Keiran Southern from the Times of London joined us on last Saturday's Raymond Chandler tour, for a moody walk through the mist. Excerpt from his story: "Los Angeles may be dominated by gleaming skycrapers now but, according to our guide Kim Cooper, if Chandler were to join us he would still recognise much of it. “Los Angeles is like a terrarium,” Cooper, who runs Esotouric with her husband Richard Schave, says. “We’ve got different generations of the insects and the moss and stuff, but it’s the exact same environment.” Cooper is referring to the crime and grime that Chandler depicted so vividly in his novels and short stories. His Los Angeles was filled with violence and corruption —commodities still in plentiful supply today. Earlier this year Jose Huizar, a once-powerful Los Angeles councilman, was jailed for 13 years for taking bribes from property developers—the kind of villain readers might expect Marlowe to be pursuing... Cooper rounds off the tour by telling us: ”If Chandler was dragged out of his grave and reanimated and given an opportunity to look around a little, he’d say, ‘Nothing’s changed at all, only I can’t get anything to eat or smoke.” A new tour date was just listed, Saturday, August 31.
CORRUPTION CORNER: If City Attorney Mike Feuer lied to the Grand Jury, it's coming out. "The public has a right to know what the government knew but chose not to prosecute." It's like the Feds went to an all-you-can-eat buffet and just took one trip to the salad bar. Justin Kloczko is on the case… The US Attorney's Office has filed its opposition to Ray Chan's motion for mistrial on the grounds that three jurors talking about the verdict's pace on their way to the parking lot doesn't constitute misconduct or prejudice. Also, our case was awesome!… What fresh hell is this?! Jose Huizar is supposed to turn himself in and go to prison on or before April 30—Walpurgisnacht. But here's an Unopposed Ex Parte Application to Continue Surrender Date, reason "Under Seal." If he ain't talking, why's he still walking?
A wind chime for the ghosts of old Los Angeles