Spanish colonial Archives

#238: Grand Central Air Terminal (Glendale)

October 12, 2024

Glendale's Grand Central Air Terminal was the first commercial airport in Los Angeles. While it’s been closed to air traffic since 1959, GCAT’s beautiful terminal building – restored by Disney to its near-original condition – is one of the best-preserved emblems of the birth of commercial aviation in Los Angeles.

#224-229: Whole Bunch o’ Bungalow Courts, pt. 4 (Pasadena)

August 11, 2024

Architecture

The bungalow court blossomed in Pasadena between 1910 & 1930. For part four of my tour of all 30 Pasadena courts on the National Register of Historic Places, we're focusing on six that are known only by their addresses. I call them: THE NAMELESS.

#222: LAX’s Hangar One (Inglewood)

July 23, 2024

Aviation

Hangar One was the first building constructed for the LA Municipal Airport (now LAX), and the only one still standing from the airport’s earliest days.

#214-219: Whole Bunch o’ Bungalow Courts, pt. 3 (Pasadena)

June 22, 2024

Architecture

The bungalow court flourished between 1910-1930, especially in Pasadena. For this third batch in our exploration of all 30 Pasadena courts on the National Register, we’re looking at six courts clustered around the historic section of South Marengo Avenue.

#193: Azusa Civic Center (Azusa)

March 18, 2024

Government & Politics

The Azusa Civic Center is a trio of Spanish colonial buildings, built in 1928 with an update in 1975. As it’s grown and evolved, the Civic Center has stayed at the center of the city’s civic life, but also helped Azusa remember its past.

#173: Ralphs Grocery Store (Westwood)

September 28, 2023

City Planning

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.

#167: Golden Gate Theater (East LA)

August 11, 2023

Architecture

The Golden Gate Theater has had a hell of a life. For 65 years, this grand movie palace entertained East LA. But after the Whittier Narrows earthquake in 1987 forced the demolition of the buildings that surrounded it since 1927, the Golden Gate was left unused for a quarter century, awaiting an uncertain fate. A fierce preservation battle ensued, which ultimately led to its restoration and reuse as a CVS. The story of this place is almost as wild as its Churrigueresque architecture.

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

June 2, 2023

City Planning

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.

#148: Christian Science Society (Avalon)

April 15, 2023

Architecture

Built in 1929 by the fabulously wealthy Wrigley family, owners of Catalina Island, the Christian Science Society was the first building in Avalon designed in the Spanish colonial revival style, an aesthetic that would dominate Avalon's look and f for the next half century.