City Planning

#202-206: Whole Bunch o’ Bungalow Courts, pt. 2 (Pasadena)

#202-206: Whole Bunch o’ Bungalow Courts, pt. 2 (Pasadena)

April 24, 2024
Pasadena was the birthplace of the bungalow court, a unique form of multi-family housing that flourished between 1910-1930. I visited all 30 Pasadena courts on the National Register – batch #2 includes craftsman, colonial revival, English cottage-style and a truly transportive example of a Tudor revival bungalow court.
#194-199: Whole Bunch o’ Bungalow Courts, pt. 1 (Pasadena)

#194-199: Whole Bunch o’ Bungalow Courts, pt. 1 (Pasadena)

March 24, 2024
The bungalow court is a style of multi-family housing that places multiple small dwellings around a central courtyard or walkway. This style of housing flourished in LA between 1910 & 1930, especially in Pasadena, but many of them have been demolished. Here are six of the 30 remaining Pasadena courts on the National Register.
#187: Aloha Apartments (Hollywood)

#187: Aloha Apartments (Hollywood)

January 8, 2024
The Aloha Apartments were built in 1928 as a hybrid apartment building/hotel. There were a few starlets that lived here, but most of the Aloha’s tenants were middle-class professionals. It's a great example of how the housing market was changing to meet the needs of all the different kinds of people flowing into Hollywood during the 1920s and ‘30s.
#180: Bowen Court (Pasadena)

#180: Bowen Court (Pasadena)

November 15, 2023
Bowen Court (1911), designed by Arthur & Alfred Heineman, is the oldest bungalow court in Pasadena still standing in its original location. It's also the quintessence of the style: 23 craftsman cottages, each one with its distinctive quirks, all centered around a wide walkway with nary a car in site.
#176: Wilton Historic District (Hancock Park)

#176: Wilton Historic District (Hancock Park)

October 16, 2023
Wilton Historic District comprises 63 well-maintained homes, mostly craftsman & colonial revival, built between 1907 and 1925. The neighborhood's unique, due to the weird-ass layout of the streets and unorthodox siting of many of the homes, and how magnificently it's held up over the past century.
#173: Ralphs Grocery Store (Westwood)

#173: Ralphs Grocery Store (Westwood)

September 28, 2023
The 1929 Ralphs Westwood building is one of the only remaining vestiges of the SoCal grocery chain's early expansion years. It was also one of the very first buildings in Westwood Village, a neighborhood whose growth paralleled UCLA's.
#158 & #159: Malaga Cove Plaza Library & Farnham Martin’s Park (Palos Verdes)

#158 & #159: Malaga Cove Plaza Library & Farnham Martin’s Park (Palos Verdes)

June 20, 2023
The Malaga Cove Plaza Library was the first dedicated library on the Palos Verdes peninsula. Dating from 1930, it's the work of Myron Hunt, and reflects the Mediterranean revival style that Hunt and the Palos Verdes Art Jury planned for the entire peninsula. Adjoining the library since the very beginning is Farnham Martin's Park, a formally landscaped oasis designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. with a multi-tiered fountain as its focal point.
#155: Great Hall/Long Hall (West Hollywood)

#155: Great Hall/Long Hall (West Hollywood)

June 2, 2023
Great Hall/Long Hall in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park was built in 1938, on land that was owned by the colorful Eugenio “Captain” Plummer. The building was one of many projects in LA funded by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. It’s served West Hollywood's diverse communities for decades, most notably as a meeting space for the advocacy group ACT UP, which shaped the federal government’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early ‘90s.
#133: Exposition Park Rose Garden

#133: Exposition Park Rose Garden

January 3, 2023
With over 19,000 rosebushes in hundreds of varietals, the Exposition Park Rose Garden is one of the largest public rose gardens in the United States. It's been open since 1928, and looks pretty much the same today as it did back then.