2158 W. 24th ST.

Kinney Heights Craftsman Retreat

A broad, recessed dormer and a bold two-story bay punctuate this dynamic early Craftsman form, with generous, extended eaves and supple rafters. The delightful complexity continues inside with substantial, successive, detail-rich rooms, each with dual exposure. Dramatic interplays of volume persist on the second floor with soaring, lancet-shaped cove ceilings, and an intimate, tree top sleeping porch. Sophisticated kitchen, with pantries, recycled glass tile backsplash, and superb linoleum inlay floor, opens onto a mature acacia tree, providing beautifully filtered ambiance, and picturesque sightline.

An unusually generous lot size, bolstered by an exceptionally wide frontage, is made even more pronounced by a relatively small building footprint. An unrivaled, outdoor life inducing green space results. The front garden is landscaped with live oaks, toyon, coral bells, lilacs and a host of California natives and climate-suited Mediterranean plants. Gravel mulch gives way to thick shows of wildflowers in spring. Stonework and a dry-stream bed by Pasadena firm Urban Organics capture and keep rainwater. The rear garden boasts a second arroyo, an Italian fountain, and meandering paths dividing beds stocked with apple, apricot and plum trees underplanted with roses, sage and lavender. At the rear is a raised bed for vegetables and a two-story carriage house with room for garden equipment downstairs and a studio above.

2158 W. 24th ST 90018
3 beds, 1.5 baths
1,712 square feet
Year built: 1906
Lot size: 58 x 150
Lot Area: 8,700
$789,000

Can't Judge A Book

Really?

Typically this sign adorns uncomely, or plain looking residences. A compensating mechanism?

Furthermore, it's seldom that I ever see a great interior attached to a bland exterior. It happens though, often exteriors are the last to receive attention. Homeowners work through systems, bathrooms, kitchens, etc, the stuff they need to live, before finally focusing on the facade. But even those postponed facades usually hold promise.

That's why neighborhoods undergoing re-appreciation will often continue to improve visually, even without turnover. Restoration projects, after decades of deferred maintenance, can take years to complete.

Me, I'm a detail guy, and I like a complex facade. Usually, rich exterior elements portend strong interior elements. Similarly, when a facade rich in detail is being compromised, or being made more simple, you can bet the same is happening inside.

Shingle Style

Without an evening of work, I attended the Maysels Bros. twin-bill at the New Beverly, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens.

Grey Gardens, released in 1975, documented the day-to-day of a mother daughter duo, former socialites, living in near isolation and semi neglect in a seaside estate in the elite Georgica Pond neighborhood of East Hampton. The estate, from which the title Grey Gardens comes, was designed by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe in 1897, in the Shingle Style.

We haven't much pure* Shingle Style in Los Angeles, though this behemoth (top) in Alvarado Terrace, endowed with touches of the Richardsonian Romanesque, possesses many typical features including a round corner tower topped with a conical roof and little or no window casing.

The former Ziegler Estate (now La Casita Verde Childcare Center) in Highland Park is another example of these "grand cottages", a rambling mass, asymmetrical, clad in shingles, with towers and extensions. Note the arched entry.

The tower (bottom image) bespeaks of possible Shingle Style magnificence, as do the slightly arched veranda piers and nominal window trim. (Still, who knows how much has been lost to the stucco monster?)

*Is anything pure ever, free from the inheritance of preceding styles? Even so, there is a Shingle Style sub-type which Los Angeles boasts in large numbers. To be continued......

Zapaterias on Maple

Three shoe repair businesses with hand painted signs on Maple Avenue.

As evidenced by the proliferation of LED video display billboards, we haven't the most committed sign control in Los Angeles.

I've often joked about seeking public office on a platform solely concerned with aesthetics. Obviously, that would mean support for historic districts and design review boards, tree planting, and mansionization ordinances. I'd also police sign clutter.

Most municipalities have sign ordinances (some govern how much display glass can be covered, for example), but seldom are they applied.

"Bootleg" signs appear everywhere, fastened to chainlink, stapled to poles, promoting musical acts, offering services.

Those bootleg signs I got an issue with, these boot signs I kinda like.

Is There Nowhere to Hide (continued)

More (mostly) elliptical (mostly) windows with radiating keystones.

Some of these apertures are round, rather than the ellipse shape. Some are louvered vents, not windows.

In masonry, the keystone (or key block) is the central, often embellished, voussoir (or wedge shaped piece) on an arch.




As in the case of the Eyebrow Dormers, some examples are made blind (see photo above) as home owners lack the resource (and sadly the interest) to repair elements for which standardized parts are unavailable.

Autopia (continued)

More images of backyard automobiles, not necessarily abandoned--but decommissioned.



While many of these broken down hulks have worth as scrap or parts, for most owners the value is sentimental.


Children play in the cars, imagining long trips, or flights of speed. They take turns being the driver. Some make noises as they pretend to shift.

It's more common to find multiple cars, a herd, than a single steed. One backyard collector, claimed to have mothballed every car he'd ever owned.

Eyebrow Dormers

Popularized in the United States by architect Henry Hobson Richardson in the mid-late 19th century, Eyebrow Dormers interject a bit of frivolity in an otherwise flat, somber roof line. The Eyebrow Dormer, also called Eyelid Dormers, take the form of a low, upward curve with no distinct vertical sides, a sine wave, half oval, or quarter round.

Dormers are structural elements that protrude from a sloping roof surface. Dormers come in many shapes and the majority incorporate windows. Dormers are generally used in top floors to introduce light, head room, and ventilation. The word dormer comes from the Latin dormitorium meaning sleeping room (think dormitory).

Largely abandoned during the Arts & Crafts period, the Eyebrow Dormer re-emerged in the early 1920's in Revival forms.

Some Eyebrow Dormers were false (or blind), glass-less or walled off, included only for their distinguishing presence. Others have become false, as homeowners lacked the resource to install curved pieces of glass; or, converted to vents (though vents also appeared in an eyebrow-like form). Some also were likely removed by witless roofers during re-decking or as they struggled to shorten their shingle courses.

University Gateway

Site prep continues for University Gateway, a mixed use development at the NW corner of Jefferson & Figueroa. Gateway is slated to provide 421 student apartments and 83,000 square feet of ground floor retail (including reportedly a major bookstore chain).

While some are concerned with scale, market impacts, and the conjunctive threat to the Felix Chevrolet showroom, the project might benefit preservation pursuits in the immediate University and North University neighborhoods, by providing more student specific housing close to campus.
University and North University Park boast some of the best 19th century housing stock in Los Angeles, a fair percentage of which serve ingloriously as a student dumping ground.

One Eastlake Manor, offered recently for sale, but long deployed as a jv flop house, featured a rare pully driven dumbwaiter, littered with empty bottles of Modelo and Carta Blanca. "Shameful," my client muttered, intended for the insensitive landlords happy to offer endangered architectural carrion to a rotating class of third-year buzzards.

That property sadly passed from one investor to another, and continues to host all manner of co-ed queens, New England run aways, and Carta Blanca lovers. In the meantime Urban Partners, the Gateway developer, expect to open by fall 2010.

Three Images

Pictures of Mickey Mouse taped to a window in an abandoned dwelling.
According to sociologist Jose Vergara, Mickey enjoys unrivaled transcultural appeal.


The exquisite marquee of the Union Theatre, now home of the Velaslavasay Panorama, in West Adams' Victorian Village. The Union, once the home of a union (of tile workers), was originally constructed in 1921 and heavily remodeled in 1939.

An unusual pocket window, glimpsed in the bathroom of an 1898 Queen Anne cottage. The sash window recesses into a pocket fronted by a built-in mirror. Cool.

Is there Nowhere to Hide?

Is there nowhere to hide from elliptical windows with radiating keystones?

Most are located in gables and dormers, but not always.

They appear on 19th century Colonial Revivals, early 20th century Craftsman dwellings, even 1930's Chateauesque apartment buildings. Not to mention, early American Federalist architecture.

Like other house parts, once identified, they become that obscure object of desire.

"Look another," I'll proclaim sometimes to the dog, sometimes to a passenger, head craned, eyes ill-advisedly divorced from the road. "There. There."

"No, up there."

Economic Miracles Part 1

Whereas most building styles moved East to West, mined from Europe and elsewhere, California was ground zero for the short lived Mission Style, and Los Angeles the mother lode.

Preservation is about many things, continuity, identity, tradition, and it should particularly apply to rare indigenous forms.

The Mission Style is marked by its parapets (and thick coping), towers, and full-length, arcaded porches, elements borrowed from California's real and imagined Spanish Colonial past.

In Alvarado Terrace, this example is still identifiable. That's the best that can be said, the distinctive massing has not been totally obliterated. Nearly anything can be restored, though restoration minded home buyers generally seek the most intact properties, not necessarily in avoidance of great challenges, but in rejoice of existing--sometimes irreplaceable--elements, and the opportunity for a high degree of "integrity". Correspondingly, the most heavily altered properties are those least likely to be restored.

Over time this gulf widens, the most intact and/or restored properties command the highest prices, and attract buyers with the most resources and the greatest sensitivities. Heavily altered properties suffer from additional neglect, or poor workmanship and the use of inappropriate and cheap materials. The value of these properties are retarded, registering less appreciation--or in a softer market as present, the greatest losses.

And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street

What a remarkably daring design, cantilevered bays and gables, seemingly supported by Italianate block modillions, corner brackets and story-high corbels.

Sadly the owners have obscured the porch area with a bum awning (beneath the cornice), and masked the lower half of the windows in the front gable with an off-center trellis. (One hopes the trellis merely serves as a short term child proofing device.)

Still the sense of movement, part ropey vortex, part incipient flower is as sudden and electrifying as a 3-D movie scare.

What's in a Name?

How to get a project built? Start with the right name, like Martin Luther King Estates, Cesar Chavez Courts, or John F. Kennedy Condos. If the project has an "affordable" component--nowadays they call it "worker housing"--that'll help. Projects for seniors usually elicit sympathy too.

Rosa Park Villas. I guess it's better than Hitler's Haciendas, or Pol Pot Plaza.

Hopefully, they'll maintain the walk path against the freeway.

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Yes, I'm open tomorrow at 2892 W. 15th ST from 2 - 5 pm, and oftentimes, just a bit longer.

Follow the green signs, 2 blocks North of Venice, 2 blocks South of Pico, 2 blocks West of Normandie, and 2 blocks East of Western.

The house has central heat, and these beautiful Art Nouveau registers, or vent covers. I hesitate to call them grilles, because they do boast a louver like system, adjust, and close.

Eastlake

The Eastlake Style (or Movement), where to begin? Perhaps with the man whose name is ascribed to the style, from which he sought to be disassociated. Confusing?

Charles Locke Eastlake (1836 - 1906) was a British architect and furniture designer, author of the wildly popular Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details, published in the U.S. in 1872. He was a reformist, who believed in a simple and single cohesive style, opposed to the excesses of the Italianate and Second Empire styles. (Ironically and contrary to his credo, the style that came to bear his name was often quite elaborate and eclectic.)

Eastlake is one of the architectural styles of the mid-late Victorian period, along with Queen Anne and Stick. Often it's difficult to draw any precise lines between these largely concurrent building types; in fact, the style goes unrecognized by many leading architectural guidebooks, examples swept into the Queen Anne or Folk Victorian categories.

The style is asymmetrical, often with diagonal corner towers, and polygonal bays. (See photos, with diagonal bays stretched into miniature towers.) Some towers feature large finials. Ridge cresting or decorative ridge flashing is also a trademark, as are intricately pierced bargeboards.

Fashion never changes abruptly, beginning or ending on certain days; and, in the West and in Los Angeles, the Victorian styles maintained prominence longer, more immune to the architectural revolutions of the 1890's and the increasingly fashionable Richardsonian Romanesque, Shingle, and Colonial American forms.

Much of Los Angeles' 19th century housing stock is located in neighborhoods wherein losses to indifference are on-going, and apparently beneath the notice of the culture capos, focused on trophy buildings, the Jet age, and places movie stars live.