More Radiating...., or Revelation?

Sunday, between morning and late afternoon showings, I side-tripped over to Central Library for the latest photography installation, Play Ball! Images of Dodger Blue, 1958-1988. Included are several pre Dodger stadium images of Chavez Ravine.

I drifted upstairs to canvas recent periodicals, including the Spring issue of American Bungalow, featuring an excellent article by Jose Vazquez on Miami bungalows. The accompanying images included a house with a window, the likes of which I've described in numerous, recent posts as: elliptical with radiating keystones. Jose Vazquez's description included the term, l'oeil de boeuf, or bull's eye. Viola!

Later, I consulted my architectural dictionaries.
L'oeil de boeuf: a round or oval aperture.
L'oeil de boeuf: an oculus.
L'oeil de boeuf: a distinctive window in Mansard roofing.
L'oeil de boeuf: a Mansart Window.

I knew there was a reason to do all this reading.

Modernism Part 2

Between Earth and Heaven, an exhibition devoted to architect John Lautner, is on display at the Hammer Museum.

Lautner emerged from the spindle of Frank Lloyd Wright (as did seemingly half the important architects of the 20th century), to create an abundance of stunningly original architecture (largely in Los Angelesland). The Hammer show attempts to trace Lautner's central ideas and fluency with space, through a loose examination of 50 works and an in depth examination of six, wherein design drawings, models, still images, curatorial writings, and video, combine.

I'd once been a big fan of Lautner, but as modern architecture soared in popularity I went in search of new gods, ever uncomfortable with mass appeal. (Of course, Lautner isn't exactly a card-carrying modernist, overtly inspired by organic forms.)

Would a presentation dedicated to an early Los Angeles master, a Joseph Cather Newsom or a Hudson & Munsell (second image), have any drawing power? Probably not. I might shadow such a show, transfixed by albumen prints, a scrap of Herter Brothers paper, and Gilded Age analysis, whilst my set, my "peeps"--nearly everyone with whom I have anything in common--every cosmopolitan, Obama supporting, greenified, Whole Foods Shopping khaver between 28 and 61 years of age--toured the Mar Vista tract, shopped for Scandinavian furniture, bubble lamps, and all things bent ply.

Afterwards I'd attempt to pass unnoticed, as the mod throng toasted and made Luau fun around the Tiki firepit, "admit it", they'd hasten, "you like amoeba shapes, post-and-beam construction, and the Rat Pack."
"I like Rudyard Kipling, Ragtime, and Tonalism," I'd retort causing a moment's stir en route to an exit stage right.


Between Earth and Heaven
The Architecture of John Lautner
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310-443-7000
www.Hammer.ucla.edu
July 13 - October 12, 2008

18th Annual Living History Tour

Saturday, September 27th at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery.

Every year, the West Adams Heritage Association presents a Living History Tour, featuring graveside portrayals at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery. Amongst the historic personages due for dramatic disinterment in 2008:

Monroe Salisbery, notable leading man of silent cinema.

Rev. Ashael Morgan Hough, one of U.S.C.'s founders.

Edward Lee Baker, Jr., a Buffalo Soldier in the Indian campaigns of the West and in the Spanish-American war.

Francisca de Paula (Dominguez) Alexander Fleming, great granddaughter of Juan Dominguez, the land grantee.

Valentine Wolfenstein, proprietor of L.A.'s first successful photography studio.

Ernestine Wade, radio performer and pioneering black actress.

Tickets are by advance reservation only, and tourgoers are assigned to specific, timed tours with guides. Tour takers are advised to wear walking shoes, as it will be necessary to travel over somewhat uneven grassy surfaces, and prepare for potentially hot weather with sunscreen, hats, and water. The tour lasts approximately three hours.

Tickets: $25 general admission, $20 WAHA members, paid by September 15th. After September 15th, pending availability, tickets $30. Children under ten years of age are free.
To order tickets send a check payable to WAHA to:

WAHA Cemetery Tour
2209 Virginia Road
Los Angeles, CA 90016

Please include an e-mail address or phone number for confirmation. For more information, or to confirm reservations, please call the WAHA Reservations Hotline at 323-732-4223, e-mail tours@westadamsheritage.org, or visit www.WestAdamsHeritage.org

The Angelus Rosedale Cemetery is located on Washington Boulevard near Normandie Avenue.

Shingle Style (Part 3)

The Shingle Style, its often claimed, is a wholly American style--the first wholly American style, inspired in large part by the humble cottages and outbuildings of New England fishing villages.

Typically the (cedar) shingles were meant to be left unpainted, and to age naturally.
Antithetically, this example (top) in Western Heights has painted shingles (albeit a verisimilar brown), and an utterly inappropriate light grey roof. The style is intended to be perceived as a whole, unified, rather than as highly contrasting planes.

In connection with the Shingle Style, many progressive turn of the century architects experimented with "rusticity," often adapting medieval forms. (Traces of which are visible in this marvelous Angelino Heights house.)

New Market Touchstones (Part 2)

Conservatism is the chief characteristic of the new market, and condition isn't the only consideration (see Part 1). Neighborhoods (or more broadly, 'locations') are increasingly vetted too.

Certainly location has always been amongst the chief considerations, but when transaction volume was at its fever pitch, more aspiring home buyers were willing to invest in transition adjacent areas and destinations with less marketplace notoriety. Buyers could see and sense the turnover, the onset of demographic diversity, and the improvement rush fueled by equity line wildcatters. It was easier to project change of an appealing and immediate sort.

Those changes may be ongoing, but a greater number of buyers now are looking for security in numbers, clusters. Dividing lines have become Maginot Lines, with consumers foregoing traditional lures like square footage to stay South of, or East of, or next to.

Intra neighborhood differences are even emerging--or intensifying, with some blocks or tracts gaining additional prestige.

The most fluid market continues to be downtown. For the first time in many decades a value--fueled by cultural offerings and mushrooming amenities--has become attached to being downtown adjacent, an endowment likely to enhance the real estate fortunes of places like Angelino Heights (see images), Elysian Heights, the University Park madhouse, and Adams-Normandie.

Downtown which may have siphoned buyers from other core neighborhoods, promises soon to repay, as first generation lofters, looking for a lifestyle change or a more conventional family model, matriculate to the neighborhoods of Central City West and East.

Inventory Updates

2892 W. 15th St is set to close early next week.

Our other ravishing offering, 1715 5th Avenue, was snapped up.

Meanwhile, we've held 2158 24th ST back longer than initially planned. That property is going to become available for viewings August 30, and all offers will be responded to September 12th. Opens will be publicized here. (Both images are of 2158 W. 24th ST.)
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I continue to fiddle with www.RecenteringElPueblo.com, streamlining the topic list, and re-labeling old posts. If you haven't checked the topics lately, new categories and entries may show. Site cleaning should continue through August.

Tour de Ghetto Part 1

More people are riding bicycles in Los Angeles. I'm sure of it.

At least down my street. As I stare out the large picture window of my home office, lost in composition, cyclists pedal past.

I don't think our transit woes can be solved by cycling. Commute distances, site visits, the need to transport materials, wear a suit, foil the flywheel. It's also hard for many to feel secure cycling around LA, or any big American city for that matter.

Nor do I think buses are the answer. Sure they're a more efficient use of resource, ferrying 35; but nothing interrupts traffic flow like a bus, tying up the right hand lane with constant stops and slow starts. City driving rule number one is don't get caught behind a bus.

I'll get nasty notes from the bus riders union now, inverting the status quo (a most endearing quality), faulting instead--and perhaps accurately--the urban haute bourgeois and the auto obsession. They don't strike me as much of a union though, maybe a band or a brotherhood or a loose confederation or something.

I'm riding a bit more myself, mostly along the Ballona Creek (see images), to the beach path, South and North, with a stop for food. Sure my gasoline bill has gone down, but my Cliff Bar bill is way up.

The Rock of Gibraltar?

Banks portray themselves as unyielding bulwarks, steadfast guardians of the public trust, a pack o' toughs. But nothing could be further from the truth. Lenders are highly impressionable schizo's, one minute squeezing into a layup line of high risk, the next minute sprinting for the showers. Jostling like floor traders to hand out no-down, interest only loans; and then, when they might grab a little market share by assuming a tad more calculated risk, recoiling into a Kafka-esqe labyrinth of underwriting.

Here's a few recent loan processor requests:
1. A nine-month paper trail of gift monies passed from mother to daughter (in addition to the standard gift letter, 'I'm the buyer's mom, I coughed up the dough', and a couple account statements).
2. An appraisal of incidental items included in a property sale (i.e., a clothes washer and lawn chairs).
3. A performance evaluation letter from a buyer's employer. (A tad invasive, eh?)
4. A significantly higher down payment from a multi-millionaire, multi-property owner, because of a vacancy in a six-unit complex. ("I've never missed a payment in 11 years on 11 mortgages," the buyer protested, "and you think I'm going to default over an unrented $600 a month studio?!")

"They're running scared," one mortgage consulted opined, "they'll take Fannie Mae's automated underwriting model, and then add conditions on top." Another mortgage professional concurred, "lenders are trying to shut the barn door, but the horses are already out."

I always thought 'by the book' was a good idea, until the book became Remembrance of Things Past.

Shingle Style (Part 2)

Whereas Los Angeles offers few examples of the prototypical Shingle (or Seaside) Style, owing to its period of development, aesthetic leanings, or even the dearth of wide frontage lots to indulge its rambling masses, one Shingle Style sub-set appears in large numbers.

Houses, largely clad in shingles, with simple and complex gambrel roof lines, appear in most neighborhoods with Arts & Crafts era architecture.

Architect John Calvin Stevens, of Portland Maine, a progenitor of the Shingle Style, is often credited with the revival of the gambrel roof, possibly inspired by Dutch Colonial architectural, which like other early American forms, was being reconsidered around the time of the American centennial.

A gambrel roof is generally symmetrical, with two slopes on each side. The uppermost slope tends to be quite slight (which allows for more headroom in interiors), while the lower slope is steep.

The example left, is clipped at the gable, and boasts deeper eaves, a characteristic that's referred to as "sunbonnet".

While some classic elements, columns or palladian windows, are borrowed from elsewhere, note the absence of applied ornamentation.

Worlds Collide

Radiating keystones and an eyebrow dormer! Holy roller!

This caps a pair of recent obsessions, now back to the Shingle Style.

New Market Touchstones

Condition has emerged as a chief consideration in the real estate market of summer 2008. Not to say there isn't a consumer for potential-laden fixers, only fewer. (Incidentally, aren't all properties fixers of a sort? I never met one blemish free.)

Initially, I credited this increased emphasis to a growing market conservatism. It's easier, I reasoned, to invest lots of money in needy structures when appreciation outpaces improvement outlays; and, when it doesn't--viola.

But other concerns are contributing to this trend, including a run-up in materials and labor costs. Copper, for example, has nearly doubled in the past five years. Plywood is about five bucks more a sheet than it was pre-occupation, which adds heavily to a roofing bill.

Finally, secondary financing is scarce, home improvement loans, home equity lines defunct. The pay-as-you-go approach, the methodology of yours truly and senior members of the old house crowd, is untenable for many of today's want-it-all-now buyers. Ergo, an increased emphasis on delivery condition.

Condition isn't the only determinative factor in the current market, others I'll cover in Part 2.

Eyebrow Dormers (continued)

Business before babble: I'll be open at 2158 W. 24th ST (see previous post for a description) on Tuesday, August 5th, between 11 am - 3 pm. The house is located three doors West of Gramercy, and two blocks East of Arlington; 24th ST is two blocks North of Adams.
This property is not yet on the MLS, nor is there a For Sale sign.

Maybe this was always a vent and never a window; still, it looks suspiciously jerry-rigged.



A delicate upturn in danger of suffocation by the next layer of roof sheeting. Preferable I suppose to a re-decking, wherein the feature might be sacrificed for a cost savings. Reason #88 for Historic Preservation Overlay Zones, historic commissions, historic designations, whatever.

Another glass-less remnant.