by Kim Cooper | Nov 23, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
In the late 1920s, as Los Angeles was becoming one of the world centers for tire manufacturing, architects Aleck Curlett and Claud Beelman were hired to design a sprawling Renaissance Revival factory complex for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in South Gate. The...
by Kim Cooper | Nov 6, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Our newest special newsletter edition for subscribers is out now, featuring a virtual visit to the non-public spaces of the Baltimore Hotel in old Skid Row. (We also have a free newsletter packed with local historic preservation news and musings.) The hotel has been...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 29, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Hi there, we are Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, the owner-operators of Esotouric (established 2007), and since late September 2020 the hosts of Saturday afternoon webinars exploring the cultural history of Los Angeles. This is the story of how we got here, with...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 5, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
As history loving Angelenos enter our sixth trying month of shuttered archives and libraries, the Getty Research Institute just dropped a thrilling bombshell with the release of the Research Collections Viewer, an online access tool to high resolution scans of...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 4, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Our newest special newsletter edition for subscribers is out today, featuring a fascinating artifact that’s tucked away in a non-public area of the Morgan, Walls and Clements’ 1927 Mayan Theatre on Hill Street downtown. (We also have a free newsletter...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 29, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Above: Nathan Marsak confirms that reports of the disappearance of the Adohr Milk Farms neon are premature [Update, October 2, 2021: Today, the Adohr Milk Farms sign was put back up on the building, following its restoration by Paul Greenstein. You can sneak a peek at...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 27, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Like so many of you, the pandemic has shrunk the size of our world. We haven’t gone out much at all since March, only to witness once-in-a-lifetime sign removals, keep the car engine humming on our socially distanced local road trips, and attend to unavoidable...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 22, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
If you’ve spent any time cruising the surface streets of Alhambra, you’ve encountered the gorgeous Art Deco neon pole signs that mark the city boundaries.You see ALHAMBRA when entering town and COME AGAIN SOON on your way out. One of these 1930s-era signs...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 10, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Success: On June 2, 2021, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to declare Sister Corita’s Studio a protected landmark. Sign up for the Corita Art Center email list for future updates. Press clips: LAist reports on the remarkable Cultural Heritage...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 15, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Richard Schave looks on The Eagle Tree, November 2019 It’s always unpleasant to break the news that a significant cultural landmark is in trouble. During a pandemic, it feels cruel. But we can’t sit on this information any longer: Compton’s landmark...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 27, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
One of our favorite genres of photography is architecture shot on slide film by vacationing or itinerant college professors. The images they capture as lecture illustrations aren’t necessarily fine art, but they always present different angles on familiar...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 19, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
A SOLUTION FOR HOMELESSNESS: A NEW LOS ANGELES COUNTY “POOR” FARM By Colleen Adair Fliedner Author of the Rancho Los Amigos Centennial History Book The words “poor farm” generally conjure up images of Oliver Twist and filthy almshouses, where half-starved men, women...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 12, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Do you love and miss the old King Eddy bar as it was before the Downtown L.A. gentrification brush blotted out its soul? Come slip into that dark, cool place in this poem by Bernard Tucker, graciously shared by his sons. King Eddy Bar The door yawns lets in the...
by Kim Cooper | May 29, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
We got a tip today from a Glendale resident and Joan Crawford fan who wishes to remain anonymous, and who we’ll call Veda. Veda wanted to be sure we knew that 1143 North Jackson Street, which served as the exterior of Mildred and Bert Pierce’s unhappy...
by Kim Cooper | May 14, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
For context on the below public comment that Richard Schave made on 5/14/20, please see our newsletter post, Listen Live As The L.A. Times Project Appeal Hearing Illuminates City Government’s Corrupt Soul. So, what happened today at the Planning Commission...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 12, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
What follows is purely speculative quarantine spitballing. As politically obsessed Los Angeles reads the tea leaves of the slow drip, drip, drip of Federal charging documents and plea agreements in the ongoing FBI public corruption investigation, anticipating the...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 5, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Last October, a passionate band of concerned Angelenos went to Los Angeles City Hall to testify one last time in support of the preservation of William Pereira’s Times Mirror corporate headquarters. This recognized architectural and cultural landmark had been...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 27, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Libraries, how we love them—especially when they’ve got plenty of room and don’t cull the weird stuff that nobody has checked out since 1923! Back in the good old days, earlier this month, we were still spending our Tuesdays at the Huntington Library, where we’d split...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 11, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
Update, May 17, 2020: In accordance with current state and local restrictions on mass gatherings, we have now had to officially postpone all of our remaining scheduled events into June. The postponed tours will be rescheduled as soon as it is again ruled safe for...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 21, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
As the Los Angeles County Supervisors rushed to approve LACMA’s hot-off-the-presses EIR for Peter Zumthor’s new museum building last April, ignoring the 83% of public emails begging them to vote no, they made frequent mention of museum director Michael...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 5, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog
December 1, 2020 update: Today, with little fanfare due to the public health restrictions in Los Angeles and in full daylight, the lamps of the restored Vermonica were switched on by artist Sheila Klein. A proper celebration will take place when it is again safe to...
by Kim Cooper | Dec 26, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Los Angeles is a magnificent melting pot, a city constantly reinventing itself as adventurous eaters explore and adapt the comfort foods of cultures not their own. Today, we have Yelp and Instagram to help us find the freshest taste sensation. But in old Los Angeles,...
by Kim Cooper | Dec 11, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to the eleventh in a series of 3-D explorable tours of off-the-beaten-path Southern California spaces, created by Craig Sauer of Reality Capture Experts using cutting-edge Matterport technology. Our love for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater is no secret. It is...
by Kim Cooper | Dec 4, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Yesterday in Los Angeles City Hall, our Richard Schave (representing the nonprofit Save LACMA and the LACMA Lovers League’s 1850+ petitioners) and Save LACMA board president Rob Hollman gave public comment against the granting of city-owned air rights over...
by Kim Cooper | Nov 8, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
We’re saddened to learn that Fred Krinke, third generation proprietor of The Fountain Pen Shop—founded in Downtown Los Angeles in 1922, housed in recent years in a Monrovia industrial park—died on Sunday. Fred was a cool, wise character who is probably...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 22, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Last Wednesday morning, we joined a passionate band of concerned Angelenos at Los Angeles City Hall in a last ditch effort to halt the runaway Planning Department train that appears intent on approving demolition of half of the historic, landmark Los Angeles Times...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 21, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
In 2016, we launched a consciousness-raising campaign for the benefit of the mid-century architect and city planner William Pereira and his endangered buildings. Since then, the risk to Pereira’s legacy has been regularly discussed in the architecture press, his CBS...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 19, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
If you’ve followed Esotouric for any time at all, you know that we’re big fans of William L. Pereira’s civic and commercial architecture, and have advocated for the preservation of such endangered buildings as the Metropolitan Water District HQ, Los...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 9, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
The Angelenos who landmarked the Los Angeles Times buildings cordially invite you to be a part of their history, by asking the Planning Commission to “do the right thing” at the Final EIR hearing on October 16 and approve a redevelopment plan that preserves and...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 5, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
We had the opportunity today to attend a small ceremony in which a section of sculptor Lee Lawrie’s Well of the Scribes fountain was unveiled in the Rare Books room of Los Angeles Public Library. View this post on Instagram Fifty years lost, now...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 10, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Some emails have just been released in response to a public records request by government transparency blogger Adrian Riskin of MichaelKohlhaas.org. He asked Councilman Mitch O’Farrell’s office for any correspondence between the councilman’s staff and anyone with...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 31, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
We were cruising across the vast flat lands of Orange County, the GPS app set to avoid toll roads and freeways, as the setting sun tinted every surface with that magical liquid gilding that can’t be painted or bottled, but is best captured in passenger window...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 13, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog, Uncategorized
Click the video below to see public comment made today at Los Angeles City Hall, when the halls were filled with Perry Mason extras in 1920s period dress, lending a weird Chinatown noir air to the proceedings. The first speaker, representing the American Cinematheque...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 26, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
We were driving the side streets of the Pico-Union District after locking down a special location to be added to the next Curse of the She-Devil true crime history tour. The late afternoon light was beautiful, with that sort of buttery, gilded quality that sends all...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 6, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Part One: Vermonica Vanishes – The Story So Far In November 2017, when an alert fan clued us in
to the disappearance of Vermonica, Sheila Klein’s beloved vintage street light installation in East Hollywood, we provided the artist with a platform here on our...
by Kim Cooper | May 30, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
When the announcement circulated yesterday about a one-day estate sale at the longtime Pasadena home of architectural historian Bob Winter, hearts dropped into stomachs all across the Southland. It was widely known that Bob intended to leave his Arts & Crafts...
by Kim Cooper | May 21, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
A week ago, after the Los Angeles Times broke the story that cracks had started to appear inside and outside the landmark Los Angeles Times buildings in January, and that Metro had prepared a report for Federal regulators, we asked the Los Angeles Planning Department...
by Kim Cooper | May 13, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
SIGN THE ORIGINAL 2019 LACMA LOVERS LEAGUE PETITION here. For several years, through our Pereira in Peril campaign, we have been part of a small and disparate collection of preservationists, architecture critics and Miracle Mile community members concerned about the...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 29, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
< The original name of this page was “Petition to Save the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre” – Click here to sign the petition. < UPDATE NOVEMBER 12, 2023: The Hollywood Reporter helps Netflix whitewash the ethical violation of...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 25, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Today, in partnership with The Late Group, we celebrate the 110th birthday of William Pereira, one of the most influential shapers of mid-twentieth-century California. His scope and innovations range from the LAX Theme Building (our Eiffel Tower) to LACMA (the...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 22, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
As we dug into our back pages to revive an early Esotouric sightseeing tour, John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill (returning to the streets on Saturday, April 27), we got a hot tip about a new-to-us archive of Downtown streetscape photographs held at UCLA...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 5, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
When Hollywood gadfly and anti-corruption activist John Walsh died in early 2019, Los Angeles City Council showed its contempt for the man by adjourning in his honor—knowing, no doubt that he had asked that this never happen, for “even in death, I would consider...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 31, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Update 6/28/2023: The Southwest Museum of the American Indian no longer exists. Sure, you can still see the big white building shining on Mount Washington, overlooking the Arroyo Seco and founder Charles Fletcher Lummis’ home, but according to Google maps,...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 4, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
In exposing one distressing historic architecture world mystery, The Los Angeles Times might have just solved a second one. As we read The Times’ story about the unreported theft of significant decorative objects from a Los Angeles warehouse, we were reminded of...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 26, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Some believe that the architecture of the home that a person grows up in has a profound influence on their developing mind. So while the open-plan modernist houses of mid-century suburbia provided ample space for computing pioneers to imagine new worlds, it’s...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 1, 2019 | The Esotouric Blog
Gentle reader… As we slam the door on 2018, it’s time for that annual Esotouric tradition: our very opinionated list of the past year’s Top Los Angeles Historic Preservation Stories. Because preservation is never as simple as buildings being lost forever or rescued...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 17, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
This is a guest post by Carlton Davis, who was the proprietor of The Art Dock drive-in gallery in the historic Pickle Works building in Downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District in the 1980s. We interviewed Carlton about this extraordinary, endangered landmark in 2013...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 4, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to the tenth in a series of 3-D explorable tours of off-the-beaten-path Southern California spaces, created by Craig Sauer of Reality Capture Experts using cutting-edge Matterport technology. We’re passionate about all of these virtual tours, but this...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 24, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
The Baltimore Hotel opened in 1910 with all good intentions, a first-class reinforced concrete, fireproof structure just across Fifth Street from John Parkinson’s handsome 1906 King Edward Hotel. The owner-builder was T. Ashton Fry, and the architect Arthur Roland...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 16, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
When the Office of Historic Resources received our nomination to make Times Mirror Square a protected Los Angeles landmark in June, notification was made to property owner Onni Group and to the newspaper’s new owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong that the historic resources...
