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The Eagle Tree: Dead or Alive?

The Eagle Tree: Dead or Alive?

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...
King Eddy Bar poem (1997)

King Eddy Bar poem (1997)

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...

Vermonica Lives!

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...
Announcing Save LACMA

Announcing Save LACMA

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...
Elegy for 1326 South Mariposa

Elegy for 1326 South Mariposa

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...
City of Los Angeles: Restore Vermonica Now

City of Los Angeles: Restore Vermonica Now


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...
The fate of Bob Winter’s library

The fate of Bob Winter’s library

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...
Robert Luthardt’s Lost Skid Row, 1967

Robert Luthardt’s Lost Skid Row, 1967

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...
The Baltimore Hotel, Empty No More

The Baltimore Hotel, Empty No More

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...
The Heather Apartments: A Long Goodbye

The Heather Apartments: A Long Goodbye

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...
Whither the Peabody-Werden House?

Whither the Peabody-Werden House?

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...
The King Edward Hotel: Empty No More

The King Edward Hotel: Empty No More

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...