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......