Author: Nathan Marsak

203rd and Western To-day

Those Chitwoods. Always stirring the pot. Torrance had had a two-year period of zero traffic fatalities before J. D.’s death that August day in ’44, and as a result the City Council built a decomposed granite sidewalk on the east side of Western, which had heretofore been pavement, which was just fine before the Lumia Trailer Park went up and folks started walking in the street.

And then the pot is stirred again, with some spice thrown in for good measure, when in a bar Helen lets blab that she shivved her hubby and pushed him in front of a car.

One problem though-she didn’t do it. The autopsy revealed that Chitwood’s lung was in fact punctured when crushed in the accident, and there was no evidence of a knife wound on the body, according to Police Chief J. A. Stroh. “I was drunk and didn’t know what I was saying and wanted to make my present hubby angry” revealed Helen Chitwood Schug, who was released to presumably relieved present husband Roland Schug.

In Other News II

A landfill full of splintered spindlework. Endless acres of white oak and Douglas Fir torn asunder, the bulldozer demolishing uncountable Queen Annes and Eastlakes, its unquenchable hunger for turreted towers and gabled gothic left unchecked. Midcentury Los Angeles was hot for Bunker Hill and Orange Grove Avenue and the very street you live on. The widows walk no more.

That was then, and this is now, and now, now we lose postwar LA. There’s a fight for Lincoln Place, there’ll be a fight for the Fabulous Forum, and we’ll have to shove long spiked poles into the graves of Millard Sheets and Welton Becket and Stiles Clements to cease their ceaseless spinning. Bit by bit, structure by structure, it goes. I’ve gone on about this before.

In any event, here are some simple, quiet buildings, wonderful examples of their type which, unlike press-grabbers like the Ambassador, will disappear unnoticed. They’re a lot like the ones in your neighborhood, you know, which, I might add, are probably just as threatened. Soak up old LA while you can.

Ulrich Plaut, 1949:

Architect unknown, 1959:

For the record, I lifted this info and these images from here.

Gary Schaffel hasn’t taken his Albers St. plans to the planning department yet, but he has informally cued his tenants to the impending evict & demolish scene. (Schaffel is the guy taking out the 1950 Stevens Nursery [Laurel Canyon & Riverside]. Turning that into 96 condominiums, via four-story blocks of stucco.)

We hear all about the need for affordable housing, yet Albers Street is another instance of a property owner demolishing (these are rent-controlled) in order to do away with such nuisances. The next time you hear some politico speak on the forthcoming affordable housing mandate, ask them why they don’t maintain the affordable housing they already have?

Should the Valley’s residents had an opinion on the matter-say, they preferred a bit of green space, or “neighborhood” sized buildings that contribute to a livable environment, over an endless chain of forty-foot stucco mountains-they could let the developers of the world know that it’d be appreciated if they stopped trawling around the ‘hood.

1612 Hillhurst To-day

One would suspect that the Chilton home would be gone. Who could live in a house where the terrible smell of cordite and burning meat lay heavy in the air? And as Hillhurst is mostly commercial now, I figured as such. But there, behind those vans, that Enterprise RentACar-

-that’s the Chilton home if ever there was one.

Interestingly, three weeks later one John E. Westover killed a man in a bar fight on Vermont Avenue; Westover’s address is listed as 1612 Hillhurst. Evidently the Chiltons got out and rented to whomever would take the blood-soaked home. Perhaps the house is clean now, Hank’s madness having inserted itself into Westover, with predictable results.

9230 Virginia Avenue To-day

From Nero to Ed Kemper, matricide has sadly been a male-dominated activity. Nice to see the ladyfolk making strides. Perhaps she was a role model for those nice Parker-Hulme girls.

The earth below this grass still has Mater Terwilliger’s DNA soaked thereinto, but the house, and its damned dirty dishes, has been replaced thusly:

Though apparently the developers left the garage. No dishes in there. Madness-free since 1917.

And Mrs. Shedden, she went into the peaceful, non-dish-doing confines of Camarillo.

Now the California State University Channel Islands. Though how the students get any work done with those stabbing pains from Elaine’s ghost-knife is beyond me.

1750 E. 118th Street To-day

Our leaders may decry black-on-black violence, but they mistakenly discount diminuative pipe-wielding sexagenarian grandmothers. We’re yet to hear Glen Ford of Radio BC address that issue.

Miz Jessie’s home has fallen to the Charles Drew Univeristy of Medicine,

but here’s the house across the street, which likely represents the lost character of the street.

Banning Homes

“Built to last 60 years without serious major repairs, LAHA low-rent homes for war workers are permanent structures.” — Los Angeles Times, October 1942


(Channel Heights, Richard Neutra, 1941-3, demolished)

Wilmington Hall, Rancho San Pedro, Banning Homes and Channel Heights housed 11,000 defense industry workers in the Harbor area. They were, as further described, “bombproof” and “will also stand up against the ravages of earthquakes, contractors say”…that may have been, but in January 1954 Mayor Paulson applied to the Public Housing Administration for Banning’s demolition. (This was the time, after all, when subsidized housing had taken on the dreadful taint of Communism…an epithet thrown at Frank Wilkinson when he worked on putting Neutra’s plans for Chavez Ravine into action, and we all know how that turned out.) The Times changed its tune regarding warchitecture’s permenance; regarding Banning Homes, they wrote: “The temporary dwelling structures were constructed in 1943 as shelters for war workers and provided 1597 apartment units…” Homes for seniors were considered, as was a school, so of course the property was rezoned industrial; returning a Federal property to the tax rolls was of primary importance to Vincent Thomas and his boys on the COC.

Spring, 1959:

Oh, and the Longs?

The Longs asked for $100,000. They were awarded $15,513. Standard Oil did their damndest to get out of even paying that.

The Homes of Eisenhart and Bronstein

So Loraine Collins comes from Los Feliz into Hollywood to hand off an automatic, which magically whacks a KA from Compton. Something dirty here. Something involving a young Otis Chandler, a slumming Jean Simmons, and an avuncular Howard Jarvis.

Loraine, her crocodile tears turning evil intent into soggy relief:

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just a tragic accident. Eisenhart kills his buddy and has to live with it the rest of his life. He walked from his place here:

To go to the party here, where a heart beat strong and innocently in his pal’s chest.

And those characters outside? Tragic accident or not, they’re about to be set up as some “crawled through the window with a gun” killers.

College & B’way, To-day

Rrraar! Yeah, you better run.

Drunko the Streetcar-Drivin’ Man is loose.

Jesse’s place, where he delved into the medicinals:

Corner of College and Main, where a plowed Viscarra plowed into poor Olga.

For whatever reason, Little Joe’s is one of this author’s favorite buildings in Los Angeles. There’s something about that 60s Mansard/Spanish lamp/engaged arch thing-so now, I digress, because I can.

Little Joe’s grocery opened at 5th and Hewitt in 1910, moving to this location in 1923, adding the restaurant in ‘27. The neighborhood was 110% Itay at the time, ‘til Union Station displaced Chinatown and the City concocted a new one here (note the curved rooflines behind LJ’s giant backlit signage). The Nuccio family, the waitresses in red, white and green outfits, the sawdust on the floor, the Piedmonte food, hung on til 1998.

Take a look while you can, folks; Little Joe’s is being demolished by the city, in cahoots with developer Larry Bond, to become a parking structure serving the forthcoming Chinesque “Blossom Plaza” mall.

(Behind Little Joe’s is the 1831 Capitol Milling complex, slated for major additions in its morph into yet another mixed-use behemoth. Since LA is lousy with major, untouched pre-Victorian structures, the bastardization of these is just no big deal.)

Temple Beth El To-day

You’d think after the whole Holocaust thing, you’d cut us a little slack there fella. (My grandparents went to Auschwitz and all I got was this lousy nation of Israel.)

You know, we had real Judeophobes then. Henry Ford! Charles Lindbergh! Walt Disney! Patton! And we’ve got who, now, the French? Puh-leeze.
And in ’47 there were no namby-pamby Abramoff scandals; there were real Jews to hate and fear. Walter Rothschild. Henry Morgenthau. Bernard Baruch. Kirk Douglas.

Maybe Mr. Bang-Bang is upset about the whole Communism thing (conveniently ignorning the Yevsektsiya purges). Course, Communism didn’t work out so well…but wait’l the Hebrews get ahold of the Civil Rights movement…that will give ol’ sharpshooter a kick in the nutzies!

Anyway…Hollywood Beth El was founded in 1920, the Wilton temple consecrated in 1923. After having gone through the tagging and the oiling and now this rifle business, they busted a move and were in a brand new modern building on Crescent Heights by the High Holy Days of 1952.

The Wilton Place structure stands:

Although there’s no evidence of past unpleasantries.

It is also, uh, no longer a synagogue.