Recentering El Pueblo

Diamonds are Forever

2010-04-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

The varied shingle idiom is amongst the defining characteristics of the late Victorian house styles.

The diamond motif, possibly inspired by playing cards, appears often.

A void, filled inexplicably, by a curtain of vellum.

The term imbrication refers to the overlapping of shaped (patterned) tiles or shingles.

Image left features a diamond, set bindi-like, in a front facing gable.

April Fools Market

2010-04-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Real estate's new Magilla Gorilla is the escrow process, longer, and more onerous. Appraisals are uncertain, rendered by out of area know nothings, loan approvals take an eternity to garner, lender demands: unceasing and often idiotic.

Not only is the 30 day escrow process a thing of the past, but even a 45 day time frame is ambitious, perhaps ill advised. Best plan on three months for an FHA deal. Delays a plenty. Need synchronized closings? Forget it, better to build in a seller rent-back.

The Appraisal Story

The appraiser surveyed the property, clipboard in hand, likely ignoring my neighborhood spiel.

"It's a new house," he blurted, questioningly.

"No," I responded flatly--a bit astonished, "it was built in 1898. Where are you from," I continued.

"La Canada," he volunteered, stealing a glance at his car, parked next to a hydrant.

"Have you ever been to this neighborhood before," I asked warily, "we're close to USC you know."

He hadn't, he didn't, and he tanked the value, comparing the property to others North of the freeway, apples and oranges.

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Supposedly we're safeguarding the consumer, thwarting cronyism with these new reforms, Good Faith Estimates, and the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC), which mandates an anonymous appraiser pool rather than area-experienced specialists. Frankly, I think it's bunk. Window dressing, at the consumer's expense, to mask financial mismanagement and a creative shortfall.

Swiss Chalet Style (Part 2)

2010-03-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

Please see preceding post: Swiss Chalet Style Part 1

Disappointingly, most of L.A.'s Chalets have been significantly altered: projecting porches enclosed, or eliminated; detailed balustrades, scroll sawn railings, lost or replaced by hollow core metal.

An outstanding model from versatile, creative architect Charles Whittlesey (image middle), and the Angelus Vista neighborhood. Whittlesey's rendition includes an extending ridge and tapered modillions.

The Bavarian spirit is alive and well in Adams-Normandie thanks to notched stickwork and scalloped details.

Swiss Chalet Style (Part 1)

2010-03-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Few examples of the Swiss Chalet Style exist in Los Angeles, and almost all were built during the Edwardian era.

Two principal sub-types can be distinguished. The first (see image top) combines a low-pitched front-gabled roof, with clipped (or jerkinhead) end, deep eaves, and exposed rafters.

The second (see image middle) is sited perpendicularly, and a large, elaborate masonry chimney serves as a visual centerpiece.

Tudor-like half-timbering, patterned stickwork, and a second story porch or balcony paired with substantial brackets, are also defining features.

Chalet elements were frequently applied to the pervasive Craftsman plan type. In the third image, a bungalow bears Chalet style stickwork in its gables. Note the elaborated, pendant-like, ends.

Part 2 tomorrow....

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Irving Gill (Part 1)

2010-03-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

Contrary to architectural mythos, the subordination of ornament--the neue Sachlichkeit--was not first realized in Vienna or Glasgow, Berlin or Oak Park, but in the sleepy, seaside hamlet of San Diego, California, where architect Irving Gill, began practice in 1893, following a brief stint in the legendary Chicago office of Adler & Sullivan.

Aided by one of his early partners, William Hebbard (who also emanated from the great Chicago seed pod), and possibly influenced by an early job stabilizing the ruins of the Mission San Diego de Alcala, Gill began offering minimalist interpretations of established styles as early as the late 1890's. The improvisational Gill may have also gained from "primitivist" Frank Mead, a student of Andalusian forms, who joined the firm in 1905 and with whom Gill briefly partnered in 1907.

Solo by 1908, and pursuing a style without definite historical precedent, the ever inventive Gill who experimented with new materials (concrete, magnesite) and methods (thin wall, tilt-slab construction), was labeled a cubist and a secessionist by an uncomprehending press.

That nothing so fresh was produced along the Eastern seaboard for a whole generation is a manifold cause for astonishment, though perhaps Gill was liberated by San Diego's isolation and freedom from architectural precepts. While the office building had undergone a streamlining, courtesy of the Chicago gang, Gill's brand of austerity--particularly in the domestic arena--was unprecedented.

Irving Gill's architectural legacy is unmatched in San Diego, where the majority of his projects can be found, and where he died in 1936. Gill fostered a series of inspired disciples, largely arts and crafts geometricists, including his nephew Louis Gill, Lloyd Wright, Hazel Waterman, and Emmor Brooke Weaver.

The San Diego Heritage Association's Annual Historic House Tour, on Saturday, March 21st, is featuring four Gill and Hebbard designs, on Balboa Park adjacent Seventh Avenue. For more information and tickets, go to www.SOHOSanDiego.org.

Block Changers

2010-03-06T06:58:00.001-08:00

It's nice to be associated with architectural masterworks, bag hefty commissions, bask in reflected glory. But my greatest source of professional satisfaction is representing buyers on block changers, typically long neglected, tenant-occupied dwellings, spewing adverse impacts.

While it's important to shepherd the comings and goings of swans, neighborhood trajectories are altered most by the passage of ugly ducklings. Because seldom is an entire block guilty of impiety; instead, a single residence is the source of horn honking, the feral cat population, late night shenanigans.

Bad apples put to compost. "The Christmas House" lay vacant after evicting a deadbeat tenant, vandalized and collecting refuse. At "La Casa Azul" people slept two to a bed, and in bunks, in violation of occupancy restrictions. The yard grew wild and brown (photo is post trim).

Homeownership may be a right, but it's also a responsibility.

Screen Savers

2010-03-03T02:36:00.000-08:00

Death of a Model

2010-03-02T20:55:00.001-08:00

Most good listing agents have a signature touch, be it catered brokers opens, property specific web-sites, or staging preferences. I've a trade secret too: marketing images incorporating animals.

I've featured half a dozen dogs and cats, in backyards, amongst tall grass, splayed across the kitchen floor, balled on a comfy chair, exhibiting happiness, vulnerability; engaging.

While I've yet to outlive a client, a couple of my most irresistible subjects have passed.

Here's hoping for a doggie and kittie heaven.

1880's/1920's/2000's

2010-02-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

Periods of prosperity, each with deflating finales.

The booms encouraged American weakness: love of magnitude, a penchant for land gambling, deplorable waste.

But after the love is gone?

The 1890's delivered a decade of unmatched eclecticism, exotic

revivals, rusticism, the Chicago School, new forms of expression, the basis of modern architecture.

In the 1930's a machine aesthetic, best exemplified by the Streamline Moderne--the continued development of those ideas first engendered in the late nineteenth century, tamped the fantasy and romance that infused America's bucolic post war period.

The late 2000's?

To Be Continued....

The Awful Tower

2010-02-17T01:48:00.000-08:00

While less tall than the U.S. Bank Tower or Aon Center, L.A. Live's 54-story hotel and condo complex nonetheless dominates sightlines, immodestly isolated on downtown's Southwestern edge.

The sleekly framed Q-tip mass, designed by big project poobahs Gensler, is the latest big city skyline marring "signature structure," joining the ranks of San Francisco's One Rincon.

Checkboarded in blue tinted glass, the structure rises, exclamation point like, along the 110 freeway, defying scale, defiling scale.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-15T09:40:00.001-08:00

Super Bowl XXXX Something or Other

2010-02-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

While I've a fondness for the Colts franchise, many things Baltimorean, I'll be rooting for the New Orleans Saints. The Colts' furtive relocation to Hoosier land, and recent big game win (2006), make the 'Aints-no-more, my feel good favorites.

The Saint franchise, christened in 1967, and playing in its first Championship game, is led by mortal-sized quarterback Drew Brees. The Colts are captained by pleasing pitchman Peyton Manning, the likely product of genetic engineering.

While Indianapolis has been installed as the odds on choice, significant Colt injuries may be a factor.

(Images courtesy of the writer's dog-eared sports card collection.)

Density Dogma (Part 2)

2010-02-03T16:53:00.000-08:00

Please see Density Dogma Part 1 (12/14/2009)

Only density, charge the growth shills, can forge the new mecca: vibrant, walkable communities, like immoderately wealthy land islands Manhattan and San Francisco. Density dendrites, linking decentralized purlieus, offer salvation, sustainability, more bakeries, a trattoria.

But what of Maywood then, I ask, to a sea of blank faces. Maywood: California's most densely populated city. More densely populated than Santa Monica, San Jose, or San Francisco. Have the residents of Maywood forsaken the combustion engine, biking to nearby jobs, past corner close farmer's markets and keen shops, enkindled by vitalizing street life?

Nope.

Are basic services, life's little necessities, nicely arrayed along the main drag, East Slauson?

Necessities perhaps, but little else, and many storefronts appear lifeless or relegated to automobile uses. Recreational opportunities, meanwhile, are nearly non-existent for Maywood's 40,000 residents, limited to a pocket park and a thin strip of L.A. River badlands. Maywood hasn't a movie theatre, or performance space, gym, toy store, libreria, cookwares shop, art supply source, or athletic fields.

The ideal urban construct, apparently, requires a bit more than up-zoning.

The Dating Game

2010-01-30T02:47:00.000-08:00

Many colonial era buildings incorporated a date stone, bearing the year of finished construction.

Dates have also been memorialized in wood, on plaques, even stained glass.

When I assume the fantasy position of Building Czar, date inscriptions will become obligatory; and, any facade changes will require notation, such as:

Built in 1914

Re-sheathed in 1972

Window Replacement in 2003

Perhaps commemoration will give pause.

Eyebrows Again?! Part 2

2010-01-19T22:20:00.000-08:00

Fleeing the bracing modernity of the Craftsman period, and the techno horrors of the Great War, English country/cottage revivalism--comfort housing, gained favor in the 1920's.

A medieval pastiche, half-timbering, prominent chimneys, irregular massing, decorative brick work, and rooflines with thatch-like characteristics were all key traits of this romantic style.

The wavy eave, or eyebrow eave (see Eyebrows Again?! 6/21/2009), a wall/roof junction with a wavy, or undulating profile, often paired with correspondingly shaped doors or windows, helped complete the illusion with a feature-softening come on.

Acanthus

2010-01-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

The Acanthus, favored flora of the Mediterranean, first used as ornament by the Greeks, in the Corinthian and Composite orders, and in many subsequent eras, found favor during the Arts & Crafts period when stylized representations of nature

dominated the decorative arts.

Not uncommonly portrayed in scrolls, and with its caulicoli exposed, alternately spiky or curly tipped, the Acanthus (aka Bear's breeches) appears often as a frieze, tempering bulk (image top).

Some historians, who have have traced the evolution of vegetal garniture, most notably Alois Riegel, claim the acanthus motif is actually a derivation of the palmette, a ubiquitous form in classical decoration.

End of the Year Finds

2010-01-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Whether on account of holiday preparations, or the influx of new, yuletide trash pickings are typically the year's best.

Note penned in 1926; amidst personal effects in a dresser drawer.

Mission style rocker with missing, damaged leg bottom and rail. Ebonized finish.

The rubbish de resistance: luscious, early '20's, china foot bath with rolled rim. Perfect for tootsies, or toddlers.

Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T08:39:00.000-08:00

Topless Turrets (Part 2)

2009-12-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

Please see Topless Turrets (8/10/2009)

A common debate in the old house community is whether preservation is better served by poverty, or prosperity?

The poor, it's supposed, lack the means to alter. Whereas the prosperous, renovate astride changing tastes.

My contention is, for a time poverty does preserve, but ultimately structure requires maintenance.

Turrets, from the Latin turris, particularly require skilled tradespeople.

A turret projects, and is therefore not to be confused with a tower or any feature integral to the building footprint.

Gold Line Eastside

2009-12-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

The city's latest addition to a burgeoning rail system, the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension (or La Linea De Oro, Edward R. Royball), debuted November 15th, at an oft-reported cost of $898 million.

The oddly-named Extension, features eight new stations a mere six miles apart, including two subterranean stops (at Mariachi Plaza and Soto).

From Union Station, the line travels South into the Little Toyko/Arts District, then East along a disturbingly sanitized (the kinship of development is development) First Street to Boyle Heights, eventually passing to Maravilla, and East Los Angeles proper.

The stations feature artful embellishment: seating and shade structures, mosaics, and sculpture.

(The top three images are from the Indiana Station, credited to Paul Botello, a founding member of the East Los Streetscrapers, key contributors to the 1970's muralist movement. Titled Syncretic Manifestations, pierced, stainless steel panels resemble Mexican papel picados, complex, perforated paper designs.)

The Eastside extension feels neither revolutionary, nor likely to create new patterns of use; and it offers not, a different vantage of the city like the grid skewering Pasadena connection.

Still, the sisyphean task continues...

Next stop: Expo Line and westward ho!

Fotografias

2009-12-21T10:29:00.001-08:00

Tudor Revival

2009-12-20T08:28:00.000-08:00

The Tudor Style, so called because it developed during the reigns of the Tudor monarchs, experienced a revival in the United States (and Britain) between 1890 - 1930.

The Tudor Revival, recapitulated several early English building types, even fusing for a time with the Arts & Crafts movement, probably on account of anti-industrial ideals.

Graced with several sub-types including the Cotswold model, the Tudor Revival is chiefly distinguished by decorative half-timbering (usually with embellishment concentrated at--but not confined to--the gable). The range of half-timber expression is truly remarkable, yielding elaborate patterns.

Decorative (or false) timbering has succeeded true half-timbering: eight to ten inch timbers, joined by mortise-and-tenon. The voids between these structural members were filled of a mortar, creating the striped or patterned appearance.

2122 Vestal (90026)

2009-12-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Elysian Heights Fixer

Two bedroom, one bath Mediterranean-revival cottage with sweeping canyon views, on secluded, tree-sheltering street.

Both the house and detached single car garage have suffered extreme, potentially structure-compromising, water damage and are uninhabitable; furthermore, the property has been cited by the Los Angeles Department of Building & Safety. It will not qualify for conventional financing.

The property may be a poor tear-down candidate as well, and parties with redevelopment interest are encouraged to review, at a minimum, building codes, lot coverage ratios, and hillside ordinances.

Neither the brokerage nor listing agent will offer any warranties, either expressed or implied.

A city owned easement runs along the Southern lot line, rendering a privacy enhancing, heretofore unbuilt buffer between properties.

An unimproved parcel, directly opposite, 2123 Vestal (APN 5420-018-011), is simultaneously being offered by Furstenberg Realty (mls#09-399431).

2122 Vestal Avenue (90026)

870 sq. ft.

Year built: 1930

Zone: LAR2

Lot size: 40 X 69

Lot area: 2,760

List price: $250,000

Interior photos and showings available upon request.

Density Dogma (Part 1)

2009-12-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Density is enjoying a heyday, back from the urban planning scrapheap, the manifesto de jour.

'Mixed use, multi-story in-fill, near transit': the current planning charge, a mantra for the development gryphon.

The re-engagement is understandable, amidst suburban disillusionment, the tireless push of affordable housing advocates, and increased concerns over the resource intensiveness of ever-expanding beltways.

Still, the urban occurrence is being fueled by more than just green jeans and a reprinting of the Jane Jacobs oeuvre. It's because our cities are safe once again, or at least (statistically) safer than they've been in recent history.

Planners understood sustainability and the merits of density in the 1970 and '80's; but were also mindful of "defensible space" (Oscar Newman's study that examined high crimes and high-rises), and the perceived failure of supra quadras like Igor-Pruitt.

The violent crime rate in the United States (as measured by the Bureau of Justice Statistics) soared from a metric of 160.9 in 1960 to 758.1 in 1991; decreasing since. The degree of urbanization, its perceived connection to lawlessness, and middle class flight, often drove policy prior to the onset of trend reversals in the 1990's.

END PART ONE