Results for “taliesin west”

Need to separate rent control unit from the rest to get an accurate increase. The city controls the increase on rent control units. In SM or West Hollywood, it is significantly lower than the national inflation and way lower than the LA inflation. As long as strong rent control exist, new comers will suffer. Even more with all these new regulations that makes new unit more expensive.

The following is a reprint of a chapter titled: Sumner, George and Esther ~ The Bradbury Reconsidered, as published in ‘Homage To Downtown ~ In Search of Place and Memory in Ancient L. A.’ 2010, 397pgs.

The fifteenth day of July 1892 brought two contrasting inceptions to the environs of Los Angeles’ Expansion District within the fourth of five years of deep recession in southern California following upon the great economic collapse of spring 1888. Demolition of the recently completed Perret Block began that day at the northeast corner of Third and Spring streets making way for construction of the Stimson Block which became the city’s first major steel frame building. A relatively minor contract was also let that day by the widow of John Hollenbeck for modifications to the top floor and roof of a four year old hotel at Second and Spring streets one block north.1
As per the design of English-born architect Hugh Todd, a small portion of roof was slated for removal, to be replaced by steel framework and frosted glass; the space beneath was soon to become the skylit upstairs parlor for the Hollenbeck Hotel, then the most popular hostelry in the city.2
Capitalist Louis L. Bradbury died that day in Oakland from the effects of chronic asthma, a condition which originally had brought him to seek relief in the more benign climate of Los Angeles. During the week previous, the basement walls of an extraordinary five-story office structure for Brad- bury had been completed at Third and Broadway. The Bradbury Building and the Stimson Block would be completed simultaneously and open to the public on New Year’s Day 1894. The latter building was soon to become the scene of the infamous Hunter-Rogers murder case, a crime which became for 1890s Los Angeles what the Simpson-Brown affair would hold for the entire nation a century later. The design of the former, more famous building would eventually serve as the kernel for an extravagant legend, one which has persisted without challenge for half a century.3
With the construction of four memorable Romanesque buildings at the end of the five year economic boom of the 1880s, the section of Broadway in Los Angeles between Second and Third streets became a sterling new focal point for the city’s expanding business district. Included among these were the Newsom Brother’s California Bank Building, Ernest Coxhead’s Y.M.C.A., Curlett, Eisen and Cuthbertson’s Potomac Block and the city’s new City Hall by architects Caukin and Haas. Today, the common memory of these buildings resides solely in black and white images; we can only imagine what their polychromatic visage might once have been like, of varied hues in granite, sandstone and marble, juxtaposing high stone polish against the prevailing rustication of the day and time.
During the 1880s, Theodore Wollwebber had operated a drugstore at the southeast corner of Third and Broadway, sold his business to Adolf Eckstein sometime in 1888 and departed the city. In November of 1890 he sold the building and lot to Bradbury. He is chiefly remembered by historian John Steven McGroarty for becoming frequently enraged by the intermittent quality of the city’s incipient telephone system, and punching holes in the wall next to his new telephone.4
Eckstein proceeded to operate the store through to late summer 1891. On October 6th, the wooden building was lifted from its foundation and moved to the corner of Third and Flower in the arroyo westerly of Prospect Hill, soon to be more popularly known as Bunker Hill. At the time, there were no other business structures at the intersection; Burgess J. Reeve’s resplendently Freestyle Ramona Hotel at Third and Spring had opened in 1888 and plans for the adjacent Muskegon and Kaweah blocks as well as the Laughlin, Byrne, Illich, Currier and Douglas buildings would be launched during the remaining years of the 1890s.5
The famous legend regarding the impetus for the design of Bradbury’s enchanting edifice would be fabricated long after the passing of the principals involved. Approached in 1953 by architectural historian Esther McCoy, it now seems as though two daughters of architect George Wyman either concocted or compounded an extravagant tale taking credit for the Bradbury’s design on the part of their late father. The Real McCoy likely recognized a whale of a tale for what it was, decided "Why not?" and failed to investigate more primary sources of information. The story is one of the founding legends of local design history and has persisted unabated, at the unfortunate expense of one great architect, with a rather doleful countenance and the name of Hunt.6
Sumner P. Hunt had emigrated to Los Angeles from New York state in 1888, joined August Heide in drafting for the firm Caukin and Haas on Spring Street north of First. He had been born in the city of Troy in the final weeks of the nation’s Civil War; his parents, Stephen and Harriet, were also natives of the locality, known as Rensselaer County. One account relates that he spent his adolescent years living in Brooklyn. Following private schooling he entered the office of architect Clarence Cutler at the age of fourteen, apprenticed into the profession and remained in Cutler’s employ for eight years.7
Today, Cutler’s only known commission in Troy is the Protestant Episcopal Church Home and Chapel Addition of 1881. City directories indicate that he terminated practice sometime during 1887. Hunt later would claim to having been in charge of Cutler’s New York City office during the following two years; however, Gotham directories of the time carry no listing either for Cutler or for Hunt. Los Angeles’ 1888 city directory indicates that he had already moved west and was employed at Caukin and Haas.8
His first two years in the city were spent residing in a rooming house on south Hill Street, just north of Central Park (Pershing Square) and in 1890 he moved to 109 N. Fort (Broadway), a site which would be transformed into the Tally Ho Stable by architect George Wyman for the Bradbury family eight years later. In 1891 he moved into an adobe owned by Mrs. Charlotte Reeves at the southeast corner of Figueroa and Jefferson streets and began overseeing repairs and an addition on her behalf. Following his marriage to Mary Hancock Chapman in early 1892, the newlyweds moved into a house on Severance Place, a short distance to the northwest. In the fall of the next year, they constructed their own residence there on Severance Place close to Caroline Severance, the city’s leading pro- gressivist, and resided therein for over four decades.9
He had gained his job with Caukin and Haas just at the outset of construction of City Hall number two to be set on Broadway just north of Third. He assisted in completing the building’s working drawings and supervised its construction as well. Caukin thereafter left the business, Hunt remained working for Haas, oversaw construction of the Romanesque Stowell Block on Spring Street and eventually established his own office within the ornate California Bank Building at Broadway and Second. That was in the year 1891, the low point of the five year economic recession. In setting up his office, Hunt most likely had already made acquaintance with Bradbury and been retained to design the five-story block at Third and Broadway.10
Born at Bangor, Maine in 1832, Louis Bradbury emigrated to Oregon after completing his schooling years and established a successful mercantile business. In 1865 he sold all of his northwestern interests, moved to Mexico and became established at mining in the colonial era city of Rosario south of Mazatlan. Originally discovered in 1655, Rosario had slowly become laced or undergirdled by miles of subterranean arteries in the excavation of the area’s treasures of silver and gold. The wealth of ores ultimately lasted three centuries. At the point of his death, Bradbury had amassed an empire estimated at $15 million, had taken possession of 2,750 acres in the San Gabriel Valley – the remaining portion of Rancho Azusa de Duarte and also constructed an opulent mansion at Court and Hill streets north of First Street.
Information provided by Bradbury’s great granddaughter and by Duarte historians relates only that he relocated to Mazatlan with interest in investing in the mining industry. Other accounts claim that he had established interest in the great Tajo Mine previous to meeting and proposing marriage to Senorita Simona Martinez. However, news accounts at the time of his death relate that Bradbury had formerly been a sea captain and that Simona’s father was working and had possession of the Rosario mine at the time of the daughter’s wedding and that Bradbury had succeeded her father in the development of the property.11
Among a variety of profiles of Los Angeles’ architects published in its edition of March 7th, 1894, the Los Angeles Builder and Contractor, a weekly newspaper charting the fortunes of the local construction industry, there is revealed that architect George Wyman, "recently in charge of erecting the Bradbury Building," had been born in Dayton, Ohio in 1860, had begun architectural school in 1883 and while a student, had worked for the firm Peters and Burns which then had oversight of the Soldier’s Home at Sawtelle as well as all other such homes across the country. Wyman’s two daughters would eventually relate to Ms. McCoy that he never had received academic training and (like Hunt) had simply apprenticed into the trade, in this case under the wing of his uncle, Luther Peters, who was then in partnership in Dayton with Silas R. Burns, a native of Morgantown, West Virginia.12
According to the daughters, in 1891, Wyman moved his family to southern California in the aftermath of a debilitating attack of pneumonia. They resided temporarily with his wife’s mother and he soon rented quarters on south Olive street, north of Eleventh. Quite possibly, he was no stranger to Los Angeles given Peters and Burns’ commission for the local Soldier’s Home, awarded in late 1887. It may also be possible that Wyman had worked at the firm’s Los Angeles office in the Redick Block at First and Broadway during 1888 and 1889. At the time of the completion of the Bradbury Building, he made claim to having designed the dining hall at the Sawtelle complex.13
Writing for Arts and Architecture magazine in 1953, McCoy would report the daughters’ claim that their father had served as Hunt’s draftsman at the outset of the project at Third and Broadway and that Hunt’s initial design schematic had failed to find favor, that Bradbury immediately disposed of Hunt and proposed that Wyman prepare an alternative design, one supposedly inspired by science fiction, which continues to astonish each and all in our present-day era on Broadway. Esther had begun her writing career eight years earlier and was also writing on a freelance basis for the Los Angeles Times.14
Los Angeles’ 1892 city directory indicates that Wyman was established and operating his own office within the Perez Block, two doors south of the Stowell Block on Spring Street. Additionally, he was eventually retained by Hunt as associate architect to supervise construction of the Byrne Building cati- corner across the Third Street intersection one year following the completion of the Bradbury. If Wyman had managed to depart the latter’s employ, taking the Bradbury project with him, it is hard to conceive that Hunt would remain so magnanimous having lost the era’s premiere commission, to his own draftsman. Moreover, attention must be drawn to the striking similarity between the original ground floor facades of the Bradbury and Byrne buildings. The ground floor frontage of the Bradbury would many years later be modified by Wyman to create storefronts along its Third Street side. The frontage of the Byrne along Third yet remains essentially unchanged.15
The general building permit for Bradbury’s structure was secured by Hunt ten days before Christmas 1891; his last involvement with the project was to obtain a permit for the building’s founda- tion walls on the following 9th of March. The next day’s Evening Express noted that the east wall of the foundation was already underway and that the structure would include a long and narrow court at its center. The newspaper also noted that Hunt would no longer be involved with the project and that Mr. Wiman (sic) "was now the architect."16
If Bradbury had rejected Hunt’s plan, why would the architect proceed to pull a foundation permit for a five-story edifice reformulated by a draftsman with less experience? It now appears obvious that the parti for the building was drawn by Hunt two years following completion of the famous Arcade Building in downtown Cleveland which itself is considered as being an amalgam of the relatively street- oriented commercial arcade building type and our more interior-oriented successive skylit office court here in Los Angeles. The February 29th, 1892 edition of the Los Angeles Times relates that Hunt indeed was replaced, that approximately three weeks earlier, Bradbury had asked Hunt to turn in the plans and the following day he was paid in full and informed that his design services were no longer required and no reason for the change was given.17
The annual edition of the Illustrated Herald of Los Angeles published the next month included Hunt’s perspective rendering of the building, touted his design and specifically mentioned a planned 45 ft. wide by 120 ft. length interior court. An obituary for Hunt published in December 1938 within The Architect and Engineer credits him with having designed the Bradbury and the 1896 edition of Los Angeles of Today Architecturally plus the 1894 City and County of Los Angeles Illustrated also credit him for the building’s design. With plans largely complete and the building and foundation permits in hand it appears that Bradbury began cutting costs in the first week of February 1892.
In proceeding with a less experienced architect as well as utilizing construction materials from out of his personal empire, Bradbury garnered an extraordinary bargain. The bust of the 1880s bubble economy continued to cast its shadow upon the city. There would have been no cost inflation in labor or whatever materials purchased. Subcontractors would have whittled their bids veritably to the bone in competing for award of the work. Apparently, the owner had stretched his dollars very far but would not live to enjoy the construction of his great edifice.
There would be no issue over who designed the building until Wyman’s daughters’ incredible allegation that their father opted to involve himself in the building’s design at Bradbury’s request, being advised to do so by his dearly departed brother ("Take the Bradbury and you will be successful.")18 during an occult game of Ouija, a highly favored pastime in the 1890s. It was Hunt’s perspective rendering of the proposed building which was eventually (and faithfully) executed in brick and stone. Until the late 1990s, one of Wyman’s grandsons was involved in conducting public tours of his own "haunted" mansion in the Los Feliz district. Multiple inquiries concerning the famous legend brought no response; he enjoyed an obsession with magic and the occult all of his adult life and is listed among sources consulted by McCoy within a detailed paper of 1968 which she prepared for entering the Bradbury into the National Survey of Historic Buildings.19 Ironically, the grandson was also the first literary agent for writer Ray Bradbury (no relation to the magnate).
Upon its completion, Wyman moved his firm into the Bradbury and quickly garnered the design of adjoining steel-frame warehouses for Crane Brothers Hardware Company and for the Whittier Family on Los Angeles Street near the intersection with Commercial. Following close behind the Stimson Block and Turnverein Hall on Main, these warehouses became the city’s earliest steel-frame struc- tures. A subsequent business block on Broadway for George Patton Sr., the Tajo Building at First and Broadway, both The Hulbert apartment house and Ferguson Office Building next to Angel’s Flight, plus the Romanesque Mueller Building at Fifth and Broadway were other significant buildings that Wyman designed within the central business district. These belie McCoy’s notion that following the completion of the Bradbury, Wyman never created another building worthy of being called "architecture."
Come 1895 he was retained to rehabilitate the drug store which had been moved into the Arroyo de Los Reyes; Eckstein re-established his store at Third and Broadway within the Bradbury in early 1894. Indeed there remains the possibility of Wyman having had a degree of influence in the design of the building considering his once having lived near Cleveland and moving west approximately at the point in time that Hunt began the design of the building. However, primary sources tend to indicate that Wyman had never served under Hunt.
At the point of the building’s completion, Wyman had spent twenty one months administrating construction on behalf of the Bradbury estate and the Los Angeles Daily Herald mistakenly assumed that he had been responsible for the building’s aesthetic and structural configuration, described in minute detail within its New Year’s Day edition of 1894.20 The Los Angeles Times’ account of the change of architects seems to indicate that no previous relationship had existed between Hunt and Wyman.
As the Bradbury neared completion in the fall of 1893, the Irvine family retained the services of Carrol H. Brown, the architect of the Stimson Block, for a design of an apartment house to be built at the northwest corner of Third and Broadway. An excavation contract was let, Brown was then ter- minated and Hunt was retained to design an office block for the site. Hunt’s offering proved too costly for Mrs. Irvine and she invited the participation of her ex-husband, San Francisco capitalist James Byrne. Hunt’s design for the site then broke ground the last week of October 1894, replacing a little landmark of a cottage which for many years had accommodated the Henderson Umbrella Company.21
Upon completion of Byrne’s edifice in 1895, The Woman’s Suffrage Campaign Committee of Los Angeles County established its first office in the building, in room 308. Prior to his death, Bradbury had entered into a lease with the city’s California Club providing accommodations within the entire fifth floor of his new building. Newly-widowed and a devout Catholic, the millionairess Bradbury quickly objected to the club’s occupancy and the earlier agreement was canceled. Whether or not Simona had become a cohort of woman’s suffrage is unknown; perhaps she was an early temperance advocate. How- ever, the question delights our present-day curiosity – in light of the club’s historic record in respect to, and for, women.22
Hunt would eventually form a partnership in 1895 with Theodore Eisen and Wesley Eager which would persist to the end of the century. Eisen had there-to-fore been serving as the city’s senior building inspector and during his four years with the firm, provided an apprenticeship to his son Percy. With the departure of Eager in 1908, Hunt entered into the long and ironic partnership with S. R. Burns, Wyman’s former boss, which proved to last till 1930, producing such notable Southland buildings as the Automobile Club, the Ebell Club, Children’s Hospital and a majority of clubhouse and park designs for the city in that era.
The project for which Hunt has been chiefly remembered is that which entailed so many late night quarrels with Charles Lummis, rara avis of all things Southwestern, at Hunt’s office in room 701 of the Laughlin Building: The Southwest Museum. The sorest point in the design was Lummis’ insistence upon consulting English architect Edwin Lutyens and formulating the building’s signature Caracol Tower, despite what appeared to be an insurmountable structural conflict. In total blindness, Lummis had it his way and Sumner was astonished; the stairset within the tower would later be cited as the world’s first helical-form concrete stairway.
Those who conduct research in primary historical sources well know that a sole scrap of paper or a single entry can provide a revelation. Within his famous daily journal of forty years of life in the west, Lummis recorded his own testament to Hunt’s ability as an architect. Randomly, he noted that Hunt possessed "a far rarer spiritual insight into the individual character of architecture – according to its destiny and function."23

[Note: anyone interested in source notes 1 thru 23 can just get ahold of Richard Schave. He has a copy of the book and can provide what-all sources were consulted for the above deconstruction. He called my agent a few years ago and when he and I subsequently spoke, he RAVED about ‘Homage To Downtown.’]

The multi-millennial flood along Rio Porciuncula in April of 1825 was of such a magnitude that it thoroughly reshaped the bottom of what was once known as The Valley of The Pueblo, later known as the Los Angeles Valley and presently, no name is attached to said topography whatsoever. The west embankment of the river floodplain was worn down, abraded to nothing well over a century ago. The embankment ran southwestward sandwhiched between present-day Main and Los Angeles streets. This valley was formed by Bunker Hill (first known as Elysian Hill) on the west and by the highland area of what we now call Boyle Heights. It extended from the narrows south to approximately where Washington Boulevard now crosses. The west edge of Boyle Heights was formerly defined by a high white bluff which was called Paredon Blanco. The whiteness was due to white quartz sand and rounded cobbles/pebbles of quartz. This cliffside was formed in the 1825 rampage. Sheep and cattle that had been husbanded both north and south of the narrows were all caught in the flood. Their bodies as well as a mountain of vegetative debris was carried along by the flood, carried way way southward and formed a dam that caused the waters to form an immense lake covering the bottomland of the lower L A Basin east of where Cal State Dominguez Hills is now located. This dam soon broke open and a river channel then cut south to what became L A Harbor, where Wilmington is now located. As the water of the huge lake drained away, the corpses of the animals were revealed. Mustard then sprouted and grew all over the lowlands, where it had never grown previously. For thousands of years previous to the flood, there had been no definitive river channel south across the lowlands to the coastline. The entire area had been a complex of tules and marshes and millions of trees. After the channel was cut through to the coast, the complex dried up and in succeeding years the forest died away. In 1855 there was a discovery of a miniscule portion of that forest – right at it’s northern tip, just east of the present day MTA Headquarters – in the vineyard of Dr. Thomas Jefferson White located on the north side of present day Ceasar Chavez Boulevard on the west bank of the river. While digging in his vineyard, enslaved native indians discovered the tops of buried trunks of trees. Those trees had been buried ten feet deep by soil deposited in the 1825 flood. Those were likely Sycamore trees (Platanus racemosa). They cannot withstand soil building up and covering their trunks. Only White Alders (Alnus rhombifolia) and certain varieties of Cottonwood can withstand such buildup.

What this all points to is a simple prognostication, that there someday will be thousands of bodies of drowned Angelenos floating in the Pacific Ocean. In 1825, the Arroyo Seco and the entirety of the San Fernando Valley was all natural terrain. No paving or rooftops. No streets or boulevards or freeways or driveways or WallMart parking lots. Global Warming anyone? What is to prevent a full-force hurricane from a direct hit on L A such as like that which was spawned off of Mexico in the mid Sixties, which proceeded on an arcing path out over the Pacific, the hurricane which followed a clockwise path, bypassed California and slammed into the coast of Oregon resulting in havoc. That event is now veritably forgotten. But now, with climate change, what is the increased probability of such an event in L A? This highly constrained portion of the L A River with it’s higher than average gradient would be a thorough disaster, the likes of which the nation has never seen. Hansen Dam and Sepulveda Dam will do little to stem the flow.

Gehry’s decision to restrict his study solely to hydrological issues was a very smart choice. The obsession of recent years with decorating the river adjacent to downtown is such a faustian bargain. Let Gehry do his thing. Our scarce resources for landscape improvements should be directed at improving the environs immediately in context of where people live their lives 24/7.

p.s. – Doctor White was a member of the first class at Jefferson’s university at Monticello. He attended the third president’s funeral in company with classmate Edgar Allan Poe. He later became California’s first speaker of the assembly after traipsing west in the Gold Rush. He died in December of 1861 during the great rainstorm of that month, the storm which caused the river to carve a large swath out of his vineyard, form an oxbow and nearly break through to/towards the southwest. Another 100 feet and the river would have again shifted and run out to Ballona Flats – is it had flown from 1815 up to the flood of 1825.

Thanks for reading this, folks.

John C.
landscape architect

SocalChill: Glad i’m not the only one who realized there is no North-South route in the West LA/Core portion of LA (West of 110, South of Hollywood/Santa Monica Mountains, North of 10), and that its desperately needed. The Redline, which is good dont get me wrong, takes people more South-East than North-South, towards Downtown. In order to have a functioning truly usable Metro/Subway Grid, we need this Crenshaw Line extension to go North, link with the Purple Line, and then continue further north (Up La Cienega, Fairfax, maybe even La Brea) and up to the Red Line.

That would be huge, bc it would allow ppl from high Tourist/ Metro-Used zones like Hollywood the ability to get all the way to Santa Monica efficently for example. Right now that route would be counter-productive if you tried to take Rapid Transportation (metro/subway) .

Crenshaw line north extension should be completed ASAP. There is virtually no way to go north/south anywhere in west LA until this is complete. Building TOD on east/west only lines (Purple, Expo, Green) makes no sense unless you can also go north/south too.

For those of you who don’t live in the South Bay or other parts of the west side, and don’t know, or care that we do not have a reliable transit system out here—the two sections of the 405 freeway from South Bay to the border of Orange County? There is NO public transit that will take us from point A on the coast, to OC without having to detour via half a dozen other light rails or metro rails, and spending the dollar equivalent of half a tank of gasoline doing it. Nobody in LA city is interested in providing reliable north-south coastal public transportation to and from the non-LA cities up and down the coast. Until those individual cities and towns along the way which are bullied by the big guys with all the money are able to band together, and spit in LA Transit’s political eye, we likely never will see our own light rail in spite of all the bond issues our tax dollars are paying for.

So, ya’ll say public transportation from Southbay already exists? Hop on a bus. It only takes a 1+ mile walk to get to the transit center at Imperial station by LAX no later than 5 a.m., travel roughly two hours and fifteen minutes of corner-after-corner bus stops, and another 1+ mile walk to arrive at the office in Mar Vista, 8 miles away, 20 minutes late. That’s if you aren’t disabled. Then do it all in reverse getting home, only this time stand up because there aren’t enough seats.

But the new Crenshaw rail system and fancy new LAX transit center will take care of all that, won’t it. Absolutely. They plan to put more north-south buses between the airport and beach cities. Anything else, we can just head east to Union station, then north, then west, on a light train, then hope the bus that takes us where we need to go is on time.

And to those who desire to take away my property’s R1 status so the city/county can advocate more pidgeon coup half million dollar condos? Stuff it. The solution is to stop building, and send all the non-residents back south, or north or east, from whence they crawled.

Where will the site workers park while on duty? As of now, the empty lot just west of this property is being used by the company building the Marriott Edition. Said Marriott isn’t scheduled for completion until next year. I’m thinking very late next year. Also, said vacant lot is the site for ANOTHER hotel.

LOL, the LA Conservancy trying to preserve a remodel now, rather than an original architectural work? And if these guys were "masters" they were masters of designing ugly buildings. It’s not a "masterpiece" no matter how you slice it. It’s been in horrible shape for decades now, was a redesign rather than an original work, and is little more than a curved facade with block windows.

Please tell us, LA Conservancy, if this is such a "masterful" and important building, why has it had a perpetual "available for lease" sign on it for years and years in such an amazing location in red hot West Hollywood? I’ll tell you why, because it’s a fucking dump and you guys are loony toons.

These ridiculous home prices and our very liberal majority legislators who’ve never met a tax they didn’t like are why I, a native of West LA will be leaving California for Northern NV. I can buy a newer, much nicer home than these pictured for about a 1/3 of the price in the beautiful Carson City vicinity, close to Lake Tahoe. The air is fresh, no traffic congestion , a booming economy and no state income or capital gains taxes.

It’s not the people with the 20 minute commutes… it’s the people with the 60-90 minute commutes who cause the most traffic. I’ve always said we if shut down the sepulveda pass, traffic in west LA would mostly disappear. One could only hope…