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
TO SIGN THE LACMA LOVERS LEAGUE PETITION, click 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
> Click here to sign the petition. < UPDATED APRIL 27, 2021 – Charitable 990 tax filings on the California Attorney General website show the cost to the American Cinematheque of displacing the 22nd Arpa International Film Festival so that Netflix could...
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
March was a sacred month for Charles Fletcher Lummis, that remarkable character who gave so much to his adopted home of Los Angeles and to the greater Southwest. It was the month of his birth, and the time of the wildest of the revels hosted in his stone castle home...
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...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 11, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: A venerable local newspaper, fallen on hard times in the aftermath of the financial crisis, sells its architecturally-significant, centrally-located Art Deco headquarters and two attached buildings, comprising an entire...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 10, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
[To access the basement / speakeasy level, click the blue dot at the top of the stairs through the arch at the left of the check in desk, or just click here.] Welcome to the ninth in a series of 3-D explorable tours of off-the-beaten-path Los Angeles spaces, created...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 10, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Charles C. Rittenhouse built the Heather Apartments (1910) in the then-popular Mission Revival style. She was an unusually attractive building, with keyhole arches spanning the porch, rusticated stone and symmetrical towers. Miss Elizabeth Stewart, Scottish stage...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 29, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Twelve years ago this week, Alicia Bay Laurel married us in the garden of the Velaslavasay Panorama with psychic cats, a cool jazz trio, eats by Papa Cristo’s, Ernst Haeckel sheet cakes, Scholium Project wine (thanks, Abe), and all our friends. It’s been a...
by Kim Cooper | May 29, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Earlier this month, concerned by social media chatter about trespassers and trash around the Peabody-Werden House in Boyle Heights, we renewed our attempts to get someone at ELACC, the low-income housing developer that moved the house two years ago, to update us on...
by Kim Cooper | May 1, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Yesterday, we attended an event at the stately King Edward Hotel (John Parkinson, 1906) in the heart of historic Skid Row, where Michael Weinstein of AIDS Healthcare Foundation introduced the new Healthy Housing Foundation model of housing L.A.’s homeless and...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 27, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to the eighth in a series of 3-D explorable tours of off-the-beaten-path Los Angeles spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. Today we’ve ventured south to the terminus of the 710 Freeway, where Street Artist in Residence...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 10, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Before his death in 2006, George Johnson held the distinction of being California’s oldest citizen at 112 (and change). Friends, caretakers and family members would often drop in on his Richmond home to hear stories of a colorful life, from a prankish...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 3, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to the seventh in a series of 3-D explorable tours of historic Los Angeles spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. For the first time in the series, we’ve documented a space that is freely open and accessible to the public. But...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 12, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Over on the California State Archives website there’s a terrific new collection of amateur travel photography by William and Grace McCarthy, San Franciscans who traveled widely, camera at the ready, between 1905 and 1938. We’re still digging through their...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 2, 2018 | The Esotouric Blog
Gentle reader… As we slam the door on 2017, 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 | Dec 8, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
[This essay originally appeared in the Esotouric newsletter] Yesterday, we attended the annual laying to rest the ashes of the unclaimed at the County Crematory and Cemetery in Boyle Heights. Since 1896, Los Angeles County has sponsored this sacred ritual, ensuring...
by Kim Cooper | Nov 24, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
On the evening of Tuesday, November 21, 2017, I received an email from a person that I don’t know asking me what had happened to Vermonica. Within a short time, through inquiries and observations from people in Los Angeles, it was confirmed that the piece had...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 8, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Brooklynite Henrietta Kaye lived an incredible American life, from Cooper Union sculpture study to half-draped Broadway showgirl, comic foil to Orson Welles in the Surrealist theatrical sensation Horse Eats Hat to noted Hollywood hostess with second husband Jim...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 22, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to the sixth in a series of 3-D explorable tours of historic Los Angeles spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. This one is special, as for the first time in our partnership, Craig got us inside a building we’ve been longing...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 7, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
The total solar eclipse that slashed across the continental US on August 21 provided a great excuse to take our favorite kind of road trip: a few semi-scheduled days roaming the blue highways, seeking out historic Main Streets, graveyards, roadside attractions,...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 30, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
With just two more days (!!!) until Downtown L.A.’s restored Angels Flight Railway returns to service, we found ourselves consumed with the urge to ride a funicular. Since Angels Flight isn’t available, we set a course for points south and the nearest best thing: Dana...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 25, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Once upon a time, in a sillier city, Jay Ward thought it would be fun to open a store at 8200 Sunset Boulevard, next to his animation studio at the eastern terminus of the Sunset Strip. From 1972 through 2004, Dudley Do-Right’s Emporium was the place the find oddball...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 23, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Our Kim Cooper has a knack for rooting out facts about Raymond Chandler that other scholars miss. New on her The Kept Girl blog, war archives reveal Chandler to be one of the fortunate survivors of the Spanish flu pandemic.
by Kim Cooper | Jul 18, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Hello there, lover of old Los Angeles and the colorful places where grim fate sets its traps. Have you wondered what’s doing with Thelma Todd’s Beach Cafe, recently sold for a lowball $6 Million and its future uncertain? We sure have. We stopped by this week, and...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 7, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Update, November 2019: The Marciano Art Foundation has closed, and all 70 visitor-facing staff members were fired, after they announced their intention to unionize. File under: when a “landmark” isn’t actually landmarked, property owners can make...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 3, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to the fifth in a series of 3-D explorable tours of historic Los Angeles spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. And what cooler space to explore than the lobby of the newly rebranded CalEdison, an Art Deco masterpiece that was...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 26, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Yesterday’s free (with RSVP) LAVA Sunday Salon and walking tour focused on the holy grail of Los Angeles mass transit history: the sealed-off streetcar station and tunnel located beneath the Subway Terminal Building. How eager are Angelenos to see this storied...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 7, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
In these trying hours, it’s helpful to remember that there once was a time when American politics was not the focus of every waking thought, and to console ourselves that one day it will once again be the boring sport of wonks. To that end, we bring you this Map of...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 3, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Update, November 2019: The Marciano Art Foundation has closed, and all 70 visitor-facing staff members were fired, after they announced their intention to unionize. For as long as we can remember, the mysterious, windowless lodge building has stood on its prominent...
by Kim Cooper | May 18, 2017 | The Esotouric Blog
Last week, we decided we had to get a break from the relentless 2017 news cycle. Which was convenient, because the unseasonably cool weather made it the perfect time to explore one of Southern California’s most inaccessible natural and historic attractions, Santa Cruz...
