Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 25, 2024

What do we mean when we talk about “mid-century modern” (MCM) architecture? My first association is with the post-and-beam aesthetic popularized by the Case Study House program. But there’s also the desert modernism of Albert Frey, the eye-popping googie diners and coffee shops of Armet & Davis, and even the highly expressive residential designs of my favorite architect, John Lautner. Tiki culture, car culture, space culture – it all played into what we think of now as mid-century modern. 

The Winona Boulevard Mid-Century Modern Historic District offers up a grab bag of MCM styles, applied to low-rise apartment buildings. Stroll down the stretch of Winona between Franklin & Hollywood, and you’ll see googie fins and tropical landscaping; Palm Springs-style stone cladding and classic “dingbat” layouts, with parking spots tucked underneath the main living space. 

These 13 apartment buildings were built over a span of 14 years, from 1950-1964. With two exceptions, all of them were designed by different people. And yet somehow, despite all the different textures and design ideas on display here, it all hangs together. 

“There is certainly a cohesive language that the buildings share, and much of it comes down to materials,” says James Dastoli. He’s the guy that wrote up the detailed National Register application for this district. “The various types of stone accent cladding, wood bezels and original metal windows are all contributing to the same feeling.”

Dastoli’s a rare breed of citizen preservationist. He’s a regular guy with a day job that has nothing to do with saving buildings. In his free time, he’s a prolific landmarker. Dastoli wrote the nomination forms for five historic districts added to the National Register in the last couple years – the Los Feliz Boulevard Courtyard Apartments, Ridgewood Place, St. Andrews Square, Westminster Place and now Winona Boulevard. He was a driving force in getting the Miracle Mile Apartments Historic District listed, too. 

For Dastoli, Winona Boulevard is personal. “I used to live on the block, but I feel like I barely noticed it,” he says. “But then, when my first kid was a baby, we were strolling down Winona to take a photo of her and I in front of my old building, and I was photographing all the apartments there for the first time, seeing how perfect so many of them were.”

In the decades before WWII broke out, this segment of Winona Boulevard was built up with sizable single-family homes and some multi-family dwellings. Three lots on the east side of the street were taken up by Marlborough Gardens, a courtyard apartment complex picturesque enough that it was advertised on postcards. 

LA County witnessed a major population boom after WWII. More than 1.3 million new residents flooded in between 1940 and 1950 (a 49% increase), looking to start new families and new lives. As a result developers looked to increase density all over Los Angeles. In the Winona Boulevard Mid-Century Modern Historic District, that meant demolishing much of the existing housing stock and replacing it with multi-family options that could fit more people on the same lot. Marlborough Gardens was one of the casualties, its Spanish/pueblo-style duplexes demolished in 1959 to make way for the 56-unit apartment building at 1800 Winona (currently called the Franklin Los Feliz Towers). That pattern was repeated over and over again on numerous residential streets between the main arteries of Hollywood, and elsewhere in the city. 

The earliest contributing property here, at 1744 Winona, was built in 1950 – just a few years after Arts & Architecture magazine introduced bold new visions for post-war housing through its ongoing Case Study House program. While the classic post-and-beam look had its most famous expression in the single-family homes of Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig, Jones & Emmons and others, it didn’t take long for architects and builders to apply MCM design tenets to larger types of housing in LA. Two great examples: Chase Knolls (in Sherman Oaks) and Lincoln Place (in Venice), both designed by Wharton & Vaughn in the 1950s and still around today. They both bring clean horizontal lines, wide eaves, inspired entryways and open floor plans to an abundant garden apartment setting. 

There’s no architect listed on most of the original building permits for the Winona Boulevard Mid-Century Modern Historic District. That usually implies that the builder also designed the property (in fact the original owner and designer/builder were one and the same in many instances here). So maybe it’s no surprise that the apartment buildings on Winona are on the more economical side of the MCM spectrum, a couple smidges less elegant than many of their counterparts designed by trained architects.

That said, one of the thrusts of mid-century modernism was the idea that good design could (and should) be accessible to all parts of the socioeconomic spectrum, through the use of cheaper materials and prefab parts, minimal adornment and simpler designs.

And there is some glorious eye candy to be had in the Winona Boulevard Mid-Century Modern Historic District. 1745 Winona is a particular favorite, with desert stone veneer adorning the entryway and vertically-scored stucco adding a shiplap-style texture to the remaining facade. With the palm trees and birds of paradise plantings out front, this is basically a residential tiki grotto – just add an Easter Island moai replica out front, and it’d be perfect. 

The vertical fins, cantilevered walkways and rounded corners of 1744-50 Winona (from 1950) and 1824-34 Winona (1953) offer an almost nautical take on MCM, cross-hatching the curviness of streamline moderne with fanciful googie details.

The Chatelet at 1851 Winona (from 1957) is a curious case, an awkward merging of the international style and a dingbat layout. So you get some faux-Neutra bands of windows and glass doors dominating the facade here (doubtful that Neutra would have approved interrupting the window bands with vertical timbers); then you get the district’s only tucked-under parking on the streetside elevation. 

The o-shaped complex at 1831 Winona, aka The Carlyle (1964), is one of the only contributing buildings designed by a practicing architect, Abraham Shapiro – a one-time partner of MCM giant Bill Krisel. The unusual visual rhythm on the facade, created by the repeated balconies and the asymmetrically-placed entryway and offset stairs, just does it for me. And that textured void on top of it, with the “Carlyle” logo sinking to the bottom? Gimme. 

1803 Winona is a marvel too, with its playfully intersecting, double-pitched roofline and the three-tiered projection that emerges from the facade like an upside-down ziggurat. Interestingly, similar projections appear in 1818, 1819 and 1837 Winona, despite having different builders and owners.

For the most part, the 13 contributing buildings here retain a high level of historic integrity. One exception is the profusion of cheap vinyl windows that have replaced the original metal casement and jalousie windows in recent years. Fighting against the incursion of vinyl windows in historic properties is something of a crusade for James Dastoli. He’s prepared this video detailing the financial and environmental downsides of installing vinyl, instead of retrofitting original windows. 

While replacement windows might seem like a small part of the overall character of a building, the Winona Boulevard MCM Historic District offers a compelling aesthetic argument against vinyl, too. Just look at the above pictures of 1803 Winona in 2024, compared to this Google Street View shot from 2014, before the windows were replaced: 

The white frames from 2024 clash with the beige stucco; the frame texture no longer blends with the vertical elements on the second floor; the playful geometries of the window frames on the first floor – once an integral part of the look of that facade – are gone. This ain’t my fight, but I think Dastoli’s onto something. 

At 1800 Winona, we have a building from 1959 that dates from the period of significance, and boasts a pretty rad band of lozenge shapes along the front roofline, but it’s undergone enough incompatible alterations that it’s not considered part of the district. There are also a few examples on the block of houses from the early 20th century that, despite being decades older than the mid-century stuff, aren’t considered “historic” for the purposes of this district. Aesthetically, they feel out of place. But they also give important context for the Winona Mid-Century Modern Historic District. You see the transition from lower to higher density dwellings, you see the stylistic changes from craftsman to Spanish colonial to mid-century modern. It’s a snapshot of the same pattern that played out all over Los Angeles.

So what’s the goal in landmarking this particular collection of buildings, at a time when they’re not (to my knowledge) under threat of redevelopment or demolition? I’ll kick it back to James Dastoli to answer that one: “Good design makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Neighborhoods should feel like ‘home’ with a distinct sense of place that connects residents to each other. The built environment should facilitate a feeling of comfort. When disruption is introduced through incompatible construction, that idea of a cohesive community begins to unravel. If these neighborhoods are preserved, we can keep all of that bound together to create stronger communities.” 

Thank you to James Dastoli for agreeing to an interview, and for his relentless advocacy on behalf of under-appreciated historic districts around Los Angeles.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Dastoli, James: “vinyl_window_replacements_plastic_waste” (Video, March 24, 2023)

+ Dastoli, James: Winona Boulevard MCM Historic District’s NRHP nomination form (PDF download)

+ Historic Aerials by NETROnline (HistoricAerials.com)

+ “Historical General Population City & County of Los Angeles, 1850 to 2020” © 1998-2019 Given Place Media, publishing as Los Angeles Almanac (accessed June 26, 2024)

+ Historic Resources Group: SurveyLA: Historic Resources Survey Report, Hollywood Community Plan Area (PDF download, LA City Planning website, 2015 revision)

+ LA Department of Building & Safety: various building permits (https://ladbsdoc.lacity.org)

+ Los Angeles City Planning: “Residential Development and Suburbanization” (planning.lacity.gov)