Etan Does LA - I'm visiting every Los Angeles landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.

#278: Friend Lacey House (Pasadena)

#278: Friend Lacey House (Pasadena)

February 28, 2026

The modest Friend Lacey House is representative of the middle-class housing that sprouted up in Pasadena in the 1890s, a period of huge growth for the newly-incorporated city. It was built in 1893 by Robert Lacey (the namesake of De Lacey Avenue) for his son Friend, and occupied by various factions of this pioneering family for decades.

#277: Workman Adobe (City of Industry)

#277: Workman Adobe (City of Industry)

February 21, 2026

Pioneers & Settlers

The Workman Adobe was built in the early 1840s for William Workman and his family, some of the earliest non-Hispanics to immigrate to Southern California under Mexican rule. This family made huge contributions to LA’s development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And as their fortunes waxed and waned over the decades, the adobe changed dramatically too. Its history is a reflection of both the people who lived there, and the broader story of Los Angeles.

#276: Standard Oil Building (Whittier)

#276: Standard Oil Building (Whittier)

January 10, 2026

The Standard Oil Building is one of Whittier's oldest office buildings, dating from an era when the hills just east of Whittier were covered in oil derricks. Since Standard left in 1930, it's had a second and third life as a college dorm and a restaurant/retail complex. But it's still got many of the charms of its original mission revival design.

#275: Bradbury Building (Downtown)

#275: Bradbury Building (Downtown)

December 25, 2025

The Bradbury Building is the oldest commercial building in Los Angeles, and yet it still feels like a vision of the future. Its interior is music as much as it is architecture, with endless rhythms of balconies and balustrades, archways and staircases, composing and re-composing themselves as your eye moves around the atrium. If you haven't gazed up at the Bradbury's glass canopy, you haven't lived.

#274: House at 1487 Loma Vista Street (Pasadena)

#274: House at 1487 Loma Vista Street (Pasadena)

December 9, 2025

This house is a great example of how Asian design influenced the craftsman architecture of the early 1900s. You'd think that something this distinctive would be the work of a well-known architect. As it turns out, it was probably ordered from a catalog.

#273: Subway Terminal Building (Downtown)

#273: Subway Terminal Building (Downtown)

December 1, 2025

For 30 years the magnificent 12-story Subway Terminal Building downtown was the end point for LA's first subway, built by Pacific Electric Railway in 1925. After two rounds of renovation, the above-ground part now serves as luxury apartments. But it's the mothballed passenger concourse and tunnel that still excites the imagination of LA history buffs, 100 years later.

#272: Hotel Hoover (Whittier)

#272: Hotel Hoover (Whittier)

November 19, 2025

For 95 years now, the old Hotel Hoover has housed travelers, permanent residents and low-income elderly folks. The building itself is a fine (if loose) interpretation of Spanish colonial architecture. Also worthy of your attention is the story of the Oak Room, the steakhouse downstairs that gave Whittier its first cocktail lounge, helping to lubricate this formerly dry town.

#271: John L. Hartwell House (Pasadena)

#271: John L. Hartwell House (Pasadena)

November 6, 2025

The John L. Hartwell House is a fine example of a modest Victorian home in Pasadena, representative of the growth of the city's northwest neighborhoods in the 1880s. But way more interesting than the architecture is the colorful cast of characters who've called this place home.

#270: El Campo Santo Cemetery (City of Industry)

#270: El Campo Santo Cemetery (City of Industry)

October 30, 2025

Pioneers & Settlers

El Campo Santo was the private family cemetery for the Workman and Temple families, two dynasties who made massive contributions to the growth of Los Angeles in the 19th and early 20th century. Generations of family members, employees and influential friends are buried within its walls. But the most fascinating part is how the cemetery's evolution over 175 years parallels the tumultuous history of the people who are buried there.

#269: House at 1141 North Chester Avenue (Pasadena)

#269: House at 1141 North Chester Avenue (Pasadena)

October 18, 2025

Built in 1914, the modest house at 1141 North Chester Avenue has all the wood, rock and wraparound porches you'd expect from a classic Pasadena craftsman. It's a great example of an "airplane bungalow" – a craftsman with a smaller second story.

#268: Palomares Adobe (Pomona)

#268: Palomares Adobe (Pomona)

October 8, 2025

Pioneers & Settlers

The Palomares Adobe was home to the first non-indigenous family to settle in the Pomona Valley. In the 1850s the Adobe was the seat of a successful cattle-ranching business run by Don Ygnacio Palomares. It served as a general store, a place of rest for weary travelers, and an occasional Roman Catholic chapel. Today you can visit the fully-restored Adobe for a window into the long-gone rancho era.

#267: Padua Hills Theatre (Claremont)

#267: Padua Hills Theatre (Claremont)

September 28, 2025

For over 40 years, the Padua Hills Theatre was a unique space where Mexican folklore was shared, by Mexican performers, with a largely white audience. It played an important role in Claremont’s development as a center for arts & culture, and its story offers a window into the complicated race relations of Los Angeles in the 1930s.

#265: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (Exposition Park)

#265: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (Exposition Park)

August 28, 2025

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has witnessed countless milestones in international sports, politics and culture. It's the only stadium to have hosted the opening and closing ceremonies at two Olympics, with a third on its way in 2028. But the stories behind the building itself – its evolving architecture, the goals of its construction, its governance, its preservation – are every bit as important to its history as what’s happened inside it.

#264: Frank Thomas House (La Cañada Flintridge)

#264: Frank Thomas House (La Cañada Flintridge)

August 15, 2025

This gorgeous mid-century modern residence was once the home of Frank Thomas, one of Disney's elite group of animators called the "Nine Old Men." Thomas worked on key scenes in Snow White, Bambi, Pinocchio, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book and more. And when he was done with another day of making 2D drawings come alive, Thomas came home to this light and wood-filled nest, designed by architect Ted Criley.

#263: Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden (Pasadena)

#263: Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden (Pasadena)

August 6, 2025

Pasadena's Storrier Stearns is a masterwork of Japanese garden design. While it'd be easy to get swept away by the tranquility here, if you’re inclined to seek it out, you can also find a complex narrative embedded in the landscape at Storrier Stearns: the stories of its maker, its benefactors and stewards, and the confluence of forces that brought a 1500-year-old tradition to a private estate in Pasadena in the late 1930s.