#134: Venice of America House (Venice)
January 9, 2023
This quirky Victorian home in Venice is one of the last residential vestiges of Venice of America: a planned resort community designed by Abbot Kinney in the early 1900s.
Architecture
#132: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House (Pasadena)
December 28, 2022
The Millard House (aka "La Miniatura") was the first of Frank Lloyd Wright's four textile block homes in Los Angeles. It marked a radical new phase in Wright's architecture, an attempt to democratize housing by ennobling the humble concrete block as a building material. It was also a remarkable integration of site and building that still stuns a century later.
#131: Petitfils-Boos Residence (Hancock Park/Windsor Square)
December 23, 2022
The Petitfils-Boos Residence is a killer (and somewhat rare) example of the refined Italian renaissance revival style applied to a single-family home. It's also got a peculiar history involving the first proper cafeteria in LA, an abandoned chocolate shop covered in exquisite brown tiles, and a case of mansion-swapping among old friends.
#130: Jennie A. Reeve House (Greene & Greene – Long Beach)
December 15, 2022
This 1904 commission in Long Beach was a significant one for architects Charles & Henry Greene, because it integrated so many of the creative features that they had experimented with but never harmonized into a single building. Their approach here pointed the way to later masterpieces like the Gamble House, Blacker House and Thorsen House.
Five Historic Houses That Even Your Kids Will Love
December 12, 2022
LA is full of cool-ass old buildings that offer plenty for both architecture buffs and the young' uns. Here's my "trail" guide to historic LA houses kids will love.
#129: The Lummis House/”El Alisal” (Highland Park)
December 9, 2022
The Lummis House (aka El Alisal) in Highland Park is a playful castle-like structure of stone, cement and telephone poles (!), hand-built by one of the most colorful figures in LA history, Charles Lummis. You can appreciate it for its architectural uniqueness, or as a 3D manifestation of Lummis's philosophy. Either way, it's one of my favorite LA landmarks.
#127: Grace Nicholson Building / Pacific Asia Museum (Pasadena)
November 21, 2022
The USC Pacific Asia Museum continues the legacy of Grace Nicholson, who built this remarkable Chinese building in 1925 to house her massive collection of Asian and Native American art and artifacts.
#126: Richard Neutra’s Strathmore Apartments (Westwood)
November 12, 2022
The Strathmore Apartments are one of four complexes designed in Westwood by famed modernist architect Richard Neutra. With its unadorned white stucco walls, flat roofs and long rows of ribbon windows, the Strathmore is quintessential international style. It's also surprisingly a plant lover's paradise, and a great example of Neutra's ability to design spaces that respond to the needs of his occupants with unfussy grace.
#124: Aztec Hotel (Monrovia)
October 30, 2022
Ghosts! Hookers! Cultural appropriation! They're all part of the fascinating history of the Aztec Hotel, an eye-popping 1925 Mayan revival hotel in Monrovia (now closed) designed by the idiosyncratic architect Robert Stacy-Judd.
#123: Natural History Museum (Exposition Park)
October 23, 2022
The Natural History Museum is justifiably famous for its awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons and taxidermied animals. But did you know it was also an art museum for 50 years? Or that Exposition Park was once a hotbed of illicit activity like drinking, gambling and...camel racing?
#120-122: Garment District High-Rises (Downtown)
October 10, 2022
The 1920s-era Garment Capitol Building, Textile Center Building and Maxfield Lofts each have their own thing going for them aesthetically. And they each capture a unique period in the economic and architectural development of the Garment District in downtown LA, which remains one of the city's economic engines to this day.
#118: Wayfarers Chapel by Lloyd Wright (Palos Verdes)
September 25, 2022
Lloyd Wright's shimmering cliffside masterpiece of redwood, glass and stone gets more impressive with each passing year, as nature swallows it up. But Wright almost didn't build it! The story of how the Wayfarers Chapel came to be is almost as amazing as the building itself. Almost.
#117: Howard Longley House (Greene & Greene – South Pasadena)
September 18, 2022
Finished in 1897, the Howard Longley House is the oldest surviving building in LA by Charles & Henry Greene, towering figures in the California craftsman architecture movement.
#112: Heinsbergen Decorating Company Building (Central LA)
August 18, 2022
This curious late gothic French chateau was the headquarters of the Heinsbergen Decorating Company, one of the 20th century's great mural and interior design firms. Respected architects Curlett & Beelman designed it in 1928, and built it out of bricks salvaged from buildings that were demolished to make way for LA City Hall.
#109: Mirlo Gate Lodge Tower (Palos Verdes)
July 31, 2022
This medieval-style tower was built in 1925 to house the gatekeeper of upscale Palos Verdes Estates. The history of the Mirlo Gate Lodge Tower tells us a lot about the development of the Palos Verdes peninsula, and it's a fascinating case study for how architects can create a unified aesthetic when planning a city.