Oh Say Can You See’s A New Cultural-Historic Monument

Altadena archivist Charlene Nichols and her husband, friend of Franklin Avenue/Los Angeles mag staffer/preservationist Chris Nichols, have their sights on saving a new landmark: The birthplace of See’s Candies.

Charlene, an archivist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, nominated the original home of See’s as a Los Angeles Cultural-Historic Monument. The City’s Cultural Heritage Commission will decide whether to grant that status this Thursday, Feb. 5, at City Hall, room 1010. (Info here.)

Details, from Charlene and Chris:

Eighty-eight years ago this fall, Canadian immigrant Charles A. See and his mother Mary See opened their very first candy shop and kitchen in a charming Renaissance Revival building at 135 N. Western Avenue in what is now Koreatown. See’s current Los Angeles candy factory opened on La Cienega Blvd. in 1946.

The building now sits empty and plans call for the destruction of it’s classical façade for a new mini-mall shopping center. The City Office of Historic Preservation gave a staff report supporting the nomination and the city has received support letters from neighborhood associations as well as the Vice President of See’s Candies who wrote “See’s has survived some of the most dramatic decades in American history and we are extremely proud of its heritage. See’s has maintained the classic look of the 1920s and Mary See’s image will always be the symbol on See’s Candy boxes…We hope the Commission will honor Charles See and the history of See’s with a Historic-Cultural Monument designation of store No. 1.”

Charlene once “took a summer job wearing the famous white dress and giving out samples in the hopes that she could tour the famous See’s candy factory.”

The Derby No Longer So Money

Three years ago, preservationists managed to save (or at least, delay) the building housing Los Feliz’s Derby night club (and a Louise’s outpost_ — the last standing remnant of the once-popular Brown Derby chain — from destruction.

At the time, L.A.’s City Council designated the Derby, in its entirety, as a historic cultural monument to the city of Los Angeles. (Check out our posts on the “Save the Derby” campaign here.)

Unfortunately, it looks like now it’s the Derby nightclub itself — made famous thanks to its appearance in the 1996 movie “Swingers,” and the swing dance revival craze that followed — that now needs saving.

According to the L.A. Times, the Derby was recently moved to a month-to-month lease. And now, word is that Sunday night’s swing dance night would be the club’s last.

Now, Rebecca Goodman — who was behind the original Save the Derby campaign — has reignited that website and is once again looking for some help. She writes:

We will continue to work with the Councilman Tom LaBonge, The Cultural Heritage Commission, The Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council, Hollywood Heritage, The LA Conservancy, and other groups and individuals who care about the rich legacy of Los Angeles, Hollywood’s Golden Age and a vibrant, active future for this building.

Lost in 2008: Another Rough Year for Preservationists, With a Few Bright Spots

(Flickr pic by Neonspecs.)

2008 marked another tough round of disappearing buildings and signs for Los Angeles preservationists. Gone were buildings such as Lou Ehlers’ Cadillac dealership on Wilshire (and the Bob’s Big Boy across the street). The year ended with a new threat: This time, to the Century Plaza Hotel in Century City.

Also, above: Our friend Eric Lynxwiler gave us the sad news that the cool old Dan-Dee Shoe Repair sign in Hollywood has vanished. The Museum of Neon Art had hoped to save the sign — following the mysterious fire at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, which shut down the store for good — but wasn’t having any luck getting ahold of the proper people. And then… one day, the sign was gone.

(Flickr photo by eyetwist.)

Ditto the huge neon sign for the massive Glendale/Atwater Village branch of furniture outlet Levitz. Seen for years off the 5 freeway, the sign recently disappeared from view, Eric notes at the ModCom message boards.

Meanwhile, it wasn’t all doom and gloom in preservation land: The nearly demolished Harvey’s/Johnie’s Broiler in Downey was ready to live again, now as a part of the Bob’s Big Boy chain. And two more L.A. landmarks, the Hollywood Palladium and Downtown’s P.E. Cole’s restaurant, reopened with what appear to be generally high marks for their renovation/restoration. (I know there are some objections to the Cole’s changes… but they seemed to be tempered by the fact that the place wasn’t completely altered.) And Macy’s also got raves for its restoration and retrofit of the old Bullock’s location on Lake Ave. in Pasadena.

Here We Go Again: The Century Plaza Hotel in Trouble

(Flickr pic by GurhanKara.)

Built in 1966, the Century Plaza Hotel — located on land formerly inhabited by 20th Century Fox, which earlier had to sell off most of its lot to resolve a financial crisis — might not live to see its 50th birthday.

As the L.A. Times reports, new owner Michael Rosenfeld would like to demolish the hotel and replace it with two high rises. Mayor Villaraigosa supports the plan, but some Westside residents, not so much.

The Century Plaza Hotel pretty much replaced the Ambassador Hotel as one of the prime go-to venue for events, banquets, etc.

The paper writes:

The 726-room Century Plaza has played host to U.S. presidents, rock stars and business moguls, and served as the location for countless galas and social functions since it was completed in 1966 as the centerpiece of an office, retail and residential development carved out of the former back lot of the 20th Century Fox film studio.

For many years the Century Plaza’s doormen wore red Beefeater costumes. The hotel’s ballrooms welcomed high-profile events, including an opening charity gala in 1966 emceed by Bob Hope, who with singer Andy Williams entertained the likes of Ronald and Nancy Reagan and Walt and Lillian Disney.

President Nixon hosted a state dinner there in 1969 for the Apollo 11 astronauts after their successful journey to the moon. In 1995, Hollywood studio head and notorious embezzler David Begelman committed suicide in a room at the hotel.

The architect was Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed New York’s World Trade Center towers.

The proposal by Los Angeles developer Michael Rosenfeld, who bought the property for $366.5 million in May, calls for razing the 19-story arc-shaped hotel on Avenue of the Stars and erecting two 50-story towers in its place. At 600 feet, they would be the tallest buildings in Century City and among the tallest in the region, with 293 condominiums, 100,000 square feet of office space, 106,000 square feet of retail space and a 240-room luxury hotel.

Is it too soon to start a “Save the Century Plaza Hotel” campaign?

Get a Piece of the Brown Derby

The Brown Derby may be long gone (except for the old restaurant’s butchered remains, on top of a strip mall across the street from the corpse of the Ambassador Hotel) — but there’s still a chance to grab a piece of the legendary restaurant.

Bonhams & Butterfields auction house will auction the items off on Dec. 21. Some details:

Highlights include a group of four framed ‘hunt’ prints, 1920s-1960s (est. $400/600); an ashtray and boxes of printed matchbooks circa 1960s (est. $300/500); a brass ‘derby’ wall sconce (est. $300/500); a 1920s wooden ‘brown derby’ wall decoration (est. $300/500); and one of the restaurant’s souvenir tablecloths – printed with a map of 1950s Hollywood, with The Brown Derby restaurant right in the center (est. $200/300).

The collection also includes a group of stock certificates (est. $200/300); a group of 1950s coasters and cocktail napkins (est. $100/150); a group of 1920s small numbered brass pins worn by the waiters for identification (est. $100/200); an assortment of dishes from the dining room (est. $200/300); a brass tabletop lamp displaying The Brown Derby’s logo (est. $200/300) and a brick salvaged from the original 1926 structure before it was razed (est. $50/75).

The lot’s preview begins Dec. 19. More details over at Eater LA.

Museum of Neon Art Settles Into Its Temporary Digs

Long located in downtown on Olympic near FIDM, the Museum of Neon Art was forced to vacate its home a few years ago after rents rocketed sky high. MONA finally found temporary digs in the Historic Core, at 136 W. 4th St., earlier this year.

The problem with the new space: The front door is too small to haul in some of the museum’s impressive pieces. But at the same time, some pieces that have been in storage for years is finally being displayed.

We visited the museum on Saturday night to take one of the MONA’s famed double-decker bus nighttime neon tours, courtesy the museum’s Eric Evavold. More on that tomorrow. But first up, today, some shots from the new MONA space:

Larchmont Hardware recently went out of business — another victim of escalating rents; in this case, in pricey Larchmont. The MONA managed to save this piece.

Here’s how it once looked, before being removed.

Maria’s favorite, the flying woman.

Chris & Pitts’ BBQ!

The remaining letters (remarkably, all but the “K” survived) from the Miracle Mile’s “The Darkroom.” (Where El Toro Cantina and Busby’s are now located.) Urban anthropologist Eric Lynxwiler, who happened to be taking the tour as well (he frequents as an MC on the neon tour, but was taking the night off), housed the letters for a while during the MONA’s move, and filled us in on how the letters were saved.

Eric also posted the story on his Flickr account:

When the store changed tenants, the stainless-steel sign was tossed out and thought to be lost forever.

Decades later, the man who was hired to remove the sign from the facade came forward. He had recognized the sign’s importance and kept what he could salvage of it (minus the absent K) in the rafters of his sign studio and, just a few years ago, donated it to the Museum of Neon Art (MONA).

As a fan of Wilshire and neon, this piece was an incredible find and I was thrilled it went to MONA and back on public display. However, after just a few years back in the public eye, the museum lost its lease and shut its doors for a year. Although MONA has now reopened in a new-yet-temporary space, the sign had to go somewhere in the interim.

And, of course, I volunteered to store it and a few other museum signs in my loft in downtown LA. Yes, that’s right, I was storing The Darkroom sign in my loft for the past year and was giddy to share it with anyone who walked in my door. It fit perfectly right under my window.

And here’s how The Darkroom looked back in the day.

Another SoCal fave: Manny Moe and Jack, of Pep Boys fame.

“The Zodiac Room,” plus an old exit sign from the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

A sight once seen all over SoCal: The Van de Kamp bakery.

Funland!

Boo: LAUSD At It Again, Threatening Another Historic Site

(Abandoned military bunker; Flickr pic by Eyetwist.)

It’s hard to argue against building new schools… yet the Los Angeles Unified School District continues to destroy old L.A. landmarks in the process. The recent victims have been heartbreaking — the Ambassador Hotel, of course, on the top of that list.

Next up: The Los Angeles Times reports that the LAUSD plans to tear down historic buildings on the site that was once San Pedro’s Ft. MacArthur:

When the bulldozers come to Ft. MacArthur next spring, Joe Janesic will take it personally.

For more than two decades, the 40-year-old has been a mainstay of the historic military site in San Pedro that was built in 1914 and served as an Army post until 1974. He organizes events, conducts tours, handles media and even restores vintage phones — all as a volunteer. A founding member of the Ft. MacArthur Museum, he has dedicated his life to preserving every relic on the grounds.

“The buildings here were unique because of the time they were built and the methods they used — old construction techniques that don’t exist anymore,” Janesic said excitedly one rainy Sunday as he pointed to a map outlining the area. “The look, feel and smell of the tactile structures — you can’t reproduce that.”

So if one day the row of beige military barracks where Army reserves once slept is mowed over, if the dilapidated mess hall where tens of thousands of soldiers once ate is destroyed, if the Quonset hut that housed olive drab trucks and jeeps is demolished — Janesic will be just as devastated as the buildings.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has plans for the land, which it has owned since 1979 when the military turned it over to the school system for educational use. The district plans to raze the structures for what is referred to as South Region High School No. 15. The 47 acres may soon be a 128,000-square-foot annex to San Pedro High School that will include the marine science and police academy magnets.

Lamenting the Ambassador

Actress and preservationist Diane Keaton wishes now that an environmental argument had been used in the battle to Ambassador Hotel. She writes in an LAT op-ed:

Preservation has always been a hard sell in Los Angeles. But maybe in the years ahead it won’t be as hard as it used to be, considering several new facts. No. 1, as my Dad would have said, a building represents an enormous investment of energy — much bigger than we thought when we were fighting to save the Ambassador. No. 2, we now know that construction of new structures alone consumes 40% of the raw materials that enter our economy every year. No. 3, according to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the resources required to manufacture these materials and transport them to a site and assemble them into a structure is the equivalent of consuming 5 to 15 gallons of oil per square foot. No. 4, a Brookings Institution study indicates that the construction of new buildings alone will destroy one-third of our existing building stock by 2030. And finally, No. 5, the energy used to destroy older buildings in addition to the energy used to build new ones could power the entire state of California for 10 years, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

We’ve treated old buildings like we once treated plastic shopping bags — we haven’t reused them, and when we’ve finished with them, we’ve tossed them out. This has to stop. Preservation must stand alongside conservation as an equal force in the sustainability game. More older and historic buildings have to be protected from demolition, not only because it affects our pocketbooks but more important because it threatens our environment.

Of course, as Keaton notes, every other argument failed to sway the LAUSD, and I’m doubtful these assertions would have changed anything.

Ambassador Cam, #39: The Skeleton Rises

As the LAUSD prepares to break ground on a new, tiny pocket park and Bobby Kennedy memorial at the Ambassador site (see Curbed LA for full details), construction has already begun on what appears to be the high school portion of the site’s three-school complex.

Curbed L.A. had more details last month:

The scope of the project includes a K-3 School, a 4-8 Middle School, and a High School, for a total of 4,624 students. The 92,000-square-foot K-3 building will accommodate 1,150 seats within 46 classrooms on three floors. The school will be located on the Ambassador Hotel site. The 4-8/High School building will accommodate 3,474 seats within 130 classrooms on six floors. The area is 382,000 square feet, and the rehabilitated Cocoanut Grove building is an additional 48,410 square feet of enclosed and covered areas.

The proposed subterranean parking structure will accommodate a total of 442 parking spaces on two levels for faculty and administrative staff. Playfields for the proposed 4-8/HS will be constructed above the parking structure. The scope also includes construction of a gymnasium building. This structure will accommodate the gymnasium court for grades 6-8 and Central Plant equipment on the first floor, and a gymnasium court for grades 9-12 on the upper level. This is one of the first LAUSD schools with an extensive public art program.

Yes, you’ll notice that the main, high school building has been designed to emulate the old Ambassador. But it’s pretty much a token gesture.

Miracle Mile’s Lou Ehlers Cadillac Building, Nearly Gone

We’ve seen so much destruction on Wilshire in recent years — Perino’s, the old Mullen & Bluett building, and of course, the Ambassador Hotel, for starters.

Now, as we noted last month at the start of its destruction, the Lou Ehlers Cadillac building is pretty much gone. The building, built by Stiles O. Clements, is making way for Beverly Hills BMW.