When east coast sophisticates came west to partake in that sweet motion picture money, they mocked and marveled at our eclectic local architecture.
For as real estate developers scrambled to satisfy the needs of a booming population, they’d looked to Hollywood set designers for inspiration. And almost overnight, and on a single block, one could choose to live in a home styled in the vernacular of Ancient Egypt, Andalusian Spain, Norman France or Tudor England.
Among the most exuberant of L.A.’s oddball architectural styles is Storybook: a fantastical blend of medieval motifs and whimsical twists that seems ripped from the pages of a fairy tale. With their pitched roofs and undulating shingles, turrets and towers, Hobbit doors and stained glass portals, these daffy structures stopped traffic when new. And Storybook gems like the Spadena Witch’s House and Tam O’Shanter restaurant remain treasured landmarks today.
Join Esotouric, L.A.’s most eclectic sightseeing tour company, for a celebration of L.A.’s Storybook style and the fascinating stories attached to these unusual structures. You’ll meet Steven Anthony, the ex-Marine Barney’s Beanery barman who took up arms to protect his beloved Storybook cottage across from the Hollywood Bowl when the County seized it by eminent domain. Then it’s out to the Eastside, where a bold new style of Chicano tattooing is perfected inside a wee Hansel and Gretel cottage. We’ll explore Hollywood’s Crossroads of the World and its surprisingly dark origins. And more tales from some of L.A.’s weirdest buildings, and the fascinating characters associated with them.
This webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with rare photos that will bring the Storybook gems of Los Angeles to life. And you’ll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.
Can’t join in when the webinar is happening? You’ll have access to the full replay for one week. Please note: the 2-hour running time is just an estimate, and we often run long because the stories take on a life of their own. You can always come back and watch the last part of the webinar recording later.
So, tune in and discover the incredible history of Los Angeles, with the couple whose passion for the city is infectious.
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About Esotouric: As undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz, Kim Cooper and Richard Schave inexplicably hated one another on sight. (Perhaps less inexplicably, their academic advisor believed they were soul mates). A chance meeting 18 years later proved much more agreeable. Richard wooed Kim with high level library database access, with which she launched the 1947project true crime blog, highlighting a crime a day from the year of The Black Dahlia and Bugsy Siegel slayings. The popular blog’s readers demanded a tour, and then another. The tour was magical, a hothouse inspiring new ways for the by-then-newlyweds to tell the story of Los Angeles. Esotouric was born in 2007 with a calendar packed with true crime, literary, architecture and rock and roll tours. Ever since, it has provided a platform for promoting historic preservation issues (like the Save the 76 Ball campaign and the landmarking of Charles Bukowski’s bungalow), building a community of urban explorers (including dozens of free talks and tours under the umbrella of LAVA) and digging even deeper into the secret heart of the city they love.
Rights and permissions: By attending an Esotouric webinar, you acknowledge that the entirety of the presentation is copyrighted, and no portion of the video or text may be reproduced in any fashion.