People sure hate courtyard living in Hollywood. Or they love it; that is, at least, they love tearing it down.
In October 1922, Eloise A. Williams pulled permits to build five two-story flats arranged around a central courtyard. The architect was William L. Williams, her husband.
Granted, 1723 isn’t going to make the cover of Bungalow Court Monthly. I prefer ’em one-story with scalloped parapets and covered in red tile and filled with accordion-playing divorcées as long as we’re on the subject. You know, the kind of bungalow courts that Conservancy justifiably frets over, and are on the endangered species list. But still, these evoke the nice old low-density Hollywood in which we’ve come to feel comfortable.
Let’s take a look up and down the avenue.
Easy livin’, right up the block from the Warner Pacific.
Looking the other way up toward the Lido (F. A. Brown, 1927) a bit of the Mayfair neon poking out, and another courtyard apartment complex of two-story structures at right, from 1916, this one with all its original windows and great privacy given the towering cedars.
So, our little pink friend on Wilcox has been owned by Nathan Korman for some time. Mr. Korman owns all sorts of properties, to various effect . Seems it’s easier to build big shiny new hotels on them.
The way he’s decided to go in this particular case is with an 80-foot tower.
Given my years of training with Hugh Ferriss, my renderings are superlative, and as such the tower will, I assure you, look exactly like this:
But if not, that’s what an 80-foot structure should basically look like on the site.
Enjoy your new Hollywood, everyone!
About Nathan Marsak
NATHAN MARSAK says: “I came to praise Los Angeles, not to bury her. And yet developers, City Hall and social reformers work in concert to effect wholesale demolition, removing the human scale of my town, tossing its charm into a landfill. The least I can do is memorialize in real time those places worth noting, as they slide inexorably into memory. In college I studied under Banham. I learned to love Los Angeles via Reyner’s teachings (and came to abjure Mike Davis and his lurid, fanciful, laughably-researched assertions). In grad school I focused on visionary urbanism and technological utopianism—so while some may find the premise of preserving communities so much ill-considered reactionary twaddle, at least I have a background in the other side. Anyway, I moved to Los Angeles, and began to document. I drove about shooting neon signs. I put endless miles across the Plains of Id on the old Packard as part of the 1947project; when Kim Cooper blogged about some bad lunch meat in Compton, I drove down to there to check on the scene of the crime (never via freeway—you can’t really learn Los Angeles unless you study her from the surface streets). But in short order one landmark after another disappeared. Few demolitions are as contentious or high profile as the Ambassador or Parker Center; rather, it is all the little houses and commercial buildings the social engineers are desperate to destroy in the name of the Greater Good. The fabric of our city is woven together by communities and neighborhoods who no longer have a say in their zoning or planning so it’s important to shine a light on these vanishing treasures, now, before the remarkable character of our city is wiped away like a stain from a countertop. (But Nathan, you say, it’s just this one house—no, it isn’t. Principiis obsta, finem respice.) And who knows, one might even be saved. Excelsior!””
Nathan’s blogs are: Bunker Hill Los Angeles, RIP Los Angeles & On Bunker Hill.
