Gentle reader,
Nobody we know likes going to the dentist. But when you’re a vintage Los Angeles architecture nut, and your dentist’s office is in the San Fernando Valley, a cleaning is an opportunity to check in on some favorite landmarks.
And that’s how we found ourselves peering in the giant picture windows of the newly restored Stanley Burke’s / Corky’s Googie coffee shop (Armét & Davis, 1958) at 5043 Van Nuys Blvd. which opens tomorrow as a Chick-fil-A fast food operation.
The restaurant building and its freestanding 36” tall neon sign are officially designed as Historic-Cultural Monument #1215, after landmarking was initiated by the Cultural Heritage Commission in 2020.
You can read all about it here including the staff report with depressing before photos of the commissioners’ tour of the shuttered restaurant and unfortunately demolished Cork Lounge bar.
As we were wrapping up our exterior explorations, and about to call restoration architect and Googie historian Alan Hess to tell him how cool it all looked, the restaurant’s operator Brad Boerneke pulled up and graciously offered to take us inside to see the restoration up close.
He was especially proud of the new terrazzo floor, which uses a slightly different color palette, but otherwise so perfectly matches the original that an aluminum script sign (in the style of the Chick-fil-A logo) was added to delineate old from new.
And we were touched by the miniature museum display about the architectural team, housed in a metal counter with pull-out drawers. Viva Helen Fong!
(Parenthetically, if you’re curious about the process of restoring terrazzo, you’ll want to watch this video we shot over multiple days of repairs to the gorgeous Owl Drug Store checkerboard sidewalk at Sixth and Broadway Downtown.)
We hope you enjoy this sneak peek of the reimagined Stanley Burke’s ahead of the tomorrow’s grand opening, and we’d love to see night photos of the illuminated interior, neon sign and swooping roof, so if you capture any, please share!
Although a Chick-fil-A is not as welcoming a presence as Corky’s and the Cork Lounge were, we’re still encouraged to see a national corporation invest in revitalizing an architectural and culture treasure that might otherwise have been demolished for new development.
If you’d like to thank the Cultural Heritage Commission for nominating one of L.A.’s greatest Googie coffee shops for HCM designation, and be a part of protecting another very special Los Angeles landmark, then join us tomorrow, Thursday, December 4 at 10am in person at City Hall room 1010 or by phone or Zoom for the first hearing on the Hollywood Center Motel.
Since breaking the story of the new owner’s efforts to demolish the buildings despite having no new project, we’ve been advocating against the ongoing demolition by neglect of this iconic compound comprising the early 20th century Queen Anne residence “El Nido,” 1920s bungalow court housing, mid-century modern breeze block walls and a fantastic neon sign.
Our hope is that it will be taken under consideration as a landmark and the City will finally act to make the property owner secure the site—ideally with metal window and door covers as at the nearby Beryl Wallace Residence / Off Vine Restaurant—or act to do that using public resources.
Hollywood Heritage submitted the Hollywood Center Motel nomination, and they’ve got a suggested text for an email if you’re not able to attend in person.
Here’s the CHC agenda with all meeting and virtual participation instructions, including a file of emails from concerned Angelenos (mostly in support of the Hollywood Center Motel, but also historian of French Los Angeles C.C. de Vere and us calling out the pending demolition of French Hospital, one of the oldest structures in town, with no historic review!)
And the hearing promises to include some drama, as Ken Marker, managing member of the owner of 10231 Santa Monica Blvd., tramps down to City Hall to ask why exactly his 1933 building, heavily remodeled in the 1970s, is under consideration as an intact example of 1920s-era Westwood development.
Here’s a map link so you can get oriented.
The nomination for The Fox Apartments on the west side of the street was submitted by the Los Angeles Conservancy and prepared by Historic Resources Group. It correctly lists the complex range of addresses as 10251 – 10257 West Santa Monica Boulevard and 1749-1755 South Ensley Avenue.
So how does 10231 come into it? We’re not sure, but when the building got its permit on 3/2/1925, a City staffer erroneously recorded it under the neighboring address, and this is called out on page 10 of the application. And more than a century later, Angelenos are still screwing up when doing business related to the corner parcels on each side of Ensley Avenue!
One possibility for the latest gaffe is that among the addresses contained in The Fox Apartments mixed-use building is 10251 Santa Monica Boulevard which somebody might have fat fingered as 10231 SMB while looking up contact information for the property owner.
If that happened, and the true owner was not notified as we suspect, there can legally be no public hearing on potential landmarking for The Fox Apartments tomorrow. But if you’re reading this, owners of The Fox Apartments, heads up!
In any case, Hollywood Center Motel is agenda item #6, and we hope to see you there, in person or virtually.
Saturday’s tour is Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice, a celebration of the raunchy 20th century all night midway district that was sanitized by City Hall prudes, but lives on through wild stories of offbeat entertainment and chilling crimes. For a real time travel trip, join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.
• For the holiday season, we’ve got a special offer that’s just the thing for the L.A. lover who already has everything: purchase four walking tour gift certificates, and get an additional ticket for free, which you can gift or use yourself.
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
• Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (12/6) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (12/13) • Know Your Downtown L.A. (Saturday, 12/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 12/21) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (12/27) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (1/24) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (1/31) • Hollywood Noir (2/7) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (2/14) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (2/21) • Weird West Adams & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (2/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (3/7) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Wonderful news! Larchmont Buzz gets the skinny on the much anticipated 2026 return of Lucy’s El Adobe and the motion picture art crew that’s restoring the tagged up facade for a shoot.
Silver Platter Bar updates: reporters at De Los and Golden State lament the landmark’s displacement, but don’t understand no demo permit exists. The supposed developer’s website has been dark all year (archive version here). Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez can save this place if she cares!
Hollywood Boulevard just got a little uglier, with the senseless whitewashing of the Hollywood Downtowner Motel. And while the County’s tenant Covenant House made this mess, it’s the City’s fault for refusing to designate landmarks and demanding citizens volunteer to nominate them.
New from Empty Los Angeles: neighbors sound the alarm about the long vacant, bee-filled(!) 123-135 San Vicente Boulevard, housing held off-market for speculation since 2018. Why can’t Santa Monicans live in the Courtyard Apartments Historic District?
Sonder went belly up due to financial shenanigans, leaving guests scrambling when Marriott shut the app down. We’re glad to see a guard in the 1923 Lane Mortgage Building (aka The Craftsman), protecting the Batchelder tiles. Will it become apartments?
How thrilling to see the chalk pounce pattern on the Earl Carroll Theatre, showing where the restored neon portrait of Beryl Wallace will go. When this iconic Hollywood sign is turned back on, we hope it’s the start of a new golden age of neon, heritage and cultural revival.
It’s Christmas time again in Pershing Square, but you won’t be able to capture this dreamy reflection of the Biltmore Hotel in the decommissioned Ricardo Legorreta fountain: a City worker is pumping the rain out just out of frame. The park needs a water feature so badly! Restore!
This was a kick: encountered a riot of red-crowned parrots in San Marino as they tried out a tree, decided it wouldn’t do and then dive bombed us!
Downtown L.A. is lousy with vacant buildings, many with absentee owners. Healthy Housing Foundation does care, but the City won’t turn on the juice for 94 RSO units in the Hotel Barclay. Meanwhile, neighbor Gabe is mapping the empty buildings: whoa! 30.7% of the Historic Core!?
Depraved! Landlord wants to demolish 8 rent stabilized units built in 1916 and 1937 at Normandie and San Marino for a new TOC tower—what about the tenants? In a city of vacant lots and empty mini malls, existing affordable housing should not be destroyed for profit.
And about those TOC towers, more dense than the law otherwise allows because they’re intended to provide rental units near transit: here’s one called The SECRET in K-Town. When it got permits and demolished all that multi-family housing, it was pitched as 39 rental units, 5 of them low income for 55 yrs. The rent is nuts. And now it’s seeking condo conversion.
If Los Angeles had done something about how Steven Taylor was using empty RSO buildings to grow his real estate empire, maybe elected officials wouldn’t be tied up in what sure looks like a massive fraud on the taxpayers.
2026 marks the centennial for many wonderful Downtown Los Angeles landmarks, and we think none is as precious as our Central Library. Here’s the just announced design for streetlight banners going up in January, and a year’s worth of bookish happenings.
Pacific Palisades residents have questions about a confidentiality clause in the Topanga State Park operating manual, and what impact it may have had on letting the Lachman Fire smolder. We believe it relates to Chumash cultural sites within the park.
Rumors were rampant the Mission Inn is for sale following the death of owner Duane Roberts, and Raincross Gazette publisher Justin Pardee tried to get to the bottom of it. His mea culpa does not convince us it’s not true, and we hope he stays on the story.
Lost in the Eaton Fire, but scanned in high resolution in 2020, Marialyce Pedersen’s annotated set of LA Cacophony Society Tales from The Zone newsletters. When rent was cheap, what a time we had! Want to help? Her fundraiser is here.
Raymond Chandler would be chuffed indeed to know the new library (alma-nac, 2024) at his boyhood school Dulwich College has been named in his honor.
The powerful don’t want us to know that we can change things we don’t like by speaking up, showing up and advocating for positive results. The difference between the SaveArclight campaign and a paid lobbyist is that you cannot pay Ben Steinberg to shut up. Save the Cinerama Dome!
As the Los Angeles Times publishes corruption fighter Robert Silverstein’s obituary (syndicated here), the City Clerk updates a neglected council file: City Council and Karen Bass quietly settled five of his Hollywood Community Plan Update cases in June. (One is not settled: Voters for a Superior Hollywood Plan vs City of Los Angeles, Case No. 23STCP01968, are represented by Jamie T. Hall and Sabrina Venskus, not Robert Silverstein.)
On Twitter, a Yimby is celebrating his death, which even other Yimbys find unsavory. And in the obituary, DLA Piper’s Head of Real Estate & Land Use Jerry Piper blames the lack of investment in Hollywood on Silverstein’s aggressive litigation. Balderdash!
We think that if Angelenos, including developers and their lawyers, and especially the media, had listened to Silverstein and recognized that the land use corruption exposed in his early Hollywood cases was a rot that had infected the entire city, and if that rot had been cut out, Los Angeles wouldn’t be so desperately broken today.
It’s not unreasonable to demand a level playing field, so that Angelenos who live and work in the City have the same opportunities as wealthy Chinese investors seeking green cards through mismanaged EB-5 investment schemes.
While dirty deals took center stage in City Hall, our best community advocates were deliberately disenfranchised and silenced, our landmarks demolished, whole neighborhoods blighted, low income renters (including the legendary gadfly John Walsh) displaced by councilmember Curren Price’s wife, Broadway’s small businesses pushed out by confessed racketeer Jose Huizar for chains that never came, graffiti towers potentially deadly in a major quake, no grocery stores in poor communities like Chinatown, and it goes on and on.
We hope land use attorneys read Silverstein’s obituary and rise to the occasion to do work like he did. Los Angeles needs warriors who are in it for the right reasons—because the alternative is that there is no Los Angeles anymore.
Let’s fight. The City is worth fighting for.
