Neon Update – June 2003

Much has happened in the world of great buildings and magnificent signage since this section was first posted, too much in fact, in that most of what there is to report is depressing, if not pathologically disinheartening.

Everything originally written still holds true, with one correction and one addendum. The Correction: The Trails (Los Angeles Neon, p. 81) did not become a mini-mall, but a “New Urbanist” housing development. (Beware the well-meaning New Urbanist—while they purport “sprawl-solving walkability” and so on, they love to tear down auto-related structures, especially mid-Century shopping malls [and road-house Ranch Modern Rte. 66 sittin’ restaurants]; moreover, when they assert, for example, “replacing America’s glazing with insulated aluminum sliding windows is a ‘Green’ building practice that saves 32% in energy costs” it really means “let’s destroy historic American façades with inappropriate crap.”)

And the Addendum: when at the end I mention that one can nominate a sign to the National Register, á la the Bekins sign, consider the fact that despite its National Register status (97001212, listed 10/15/97) the sign was recently significantly altered with the good graces of the City of Pasadena (e.g., John Steinmeyer, Planner, Design & Historic Preservation Section). After 75 years, it is no longer the Bekins sign. Even landmarks need protection.

But let’s move on, and begin our update with the Good News: despite the wholesale gutting of many a building in LA’s “Historic Core,” there may be something to be said for the influx of developers and their innumerable loft projects into Downtown. Through public moneys via the LUMENS project and MONA, the Bendix Tower has been relit at 12th and Maple, as has the Los Angeles Theater marquee. (When that, the Tower and the Orpheum are all on at once…it is a wonder to behold, after decades of darkness.) The Palace Theater marquee is next to be restored, and the KRKD towers are slated to be graced with incandescent bulbs. Moreover, the Hotel Cecil has seen fit to relight their magnificent neon blades! Über kudos to them! (Too bad the Rosslyn decided to tear the neon off their giant blade…and the Baltimore recently decided to throw their 1930s neon blade in a dumpster…but I’m getting ahead of myself in the Bad News department.) In other good news, Ray Neal & Co. from Standard Electric are hard at work restoring the bravura Helms Bakery rooftop in Culver City (p. 110), a neon and incandescent spectacular. The Norms (p. 88) 6-stage neon signs—designed by Eldon Davis and Helen Fong as scribbled on a cocktail napkin in a Norms booth, 1950—at La Cienega, Santa Monica and Westwood blaze again fiercely, thanks to the wisdom and foresight of Norm’s pres. Phil Singerman. Should anyone out there know of further signage that has been restored, let us know and we’ll be effusive with recognition and gratitude on this humble site. Of course, you may show your appreciation buy supporting these (or other, in LA or not) establishments and informing their owners that upkept signage means a happy patronage.

And now for the Bad News.

Besides neon signage, it’s been a tough year for first-rate architectural landmarks in Los Angeles. The amazing Streamline Moderne KEHE building by Stiles “Coulter’s” Clements was razed by the LAUSD (more on that below); the 30s Shopping Bag Building on Colorado in Eagle Rock was lost to the “let’s fill America’s landfills with disposable foreign detritus” camp of Walgreen’s and their worker-drone Councilman Pacheco; ENDANGERED BUILDINGS include Clements’ pristine 1949 Late Moderne Mullen & Bluett building on Wilshire, threatened with demolition by Legacy Partners of Irvine (who are also salivating over the demolition of another rare remnant of the Miracle Mile, the neighboring 1939 Phelps Terkel building); the remarkable Panorama
was threatened by the Proposition F Bond (what other historic structures remain to be torn down for fire stations?) and, although that fell apart, the owner is now seeing development fairies; the 1963 Hanna-Barbera Studio is threatened, as is the joyfully be’neond Smoke House , not to mention the Miracle Mile Mansard of Perino’s, favorite of Chaplin and Monroe and innumerable mobsters, which, courtesy of Tom Carey & Tef Kutay will go the way of the Brown Derbies in being flattened for development.

The Holiday Bowl (pp.148-149) is in serious trouble at this very moment—the 1958 ultra-googie lone remnant of old Crenshaw, as famous for its Armét&Davis design as for being a gathering point for African and Asian-American bowlers, is going to be demolished as one of Councilman Nate Holden’s final, mean-spirited blows to the community, despite the fact that Councilman-elect Martin Ludlow and an enormous community coalition support the Bowl’s retention.

Kona Lanes
and its magnificent neon are gone. Some characters named the Segerstroms apparently turned their collective back on family history and community involvement in an effort to curry favor with the Gods of Banality. The neon has been stolen by looters. Not looters of the Rodney King riot-sort, but looters of the “Atlas Shrugged” variety…

All sorts of people wanted to renovate the popular, profitable 1958 Tiki-Googie masterpiece. C.J. Segerstrom and Sons elected to raze the property (along with a movie theater and ice-skating rink) even though the city has nixed their proposed Kohl’s department store. An empty lot it shall be. Although evil-does will rightfully spend eternity in hell, Tiki still weeps for the loss.

In yet further bowling news, Hollywood Star Lanes (p. 145) has been razed by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)—to add insult to injury, these looters sold the neon to some underling in the perfidious Hollywood-Highland Megatronplex. Said subordinate took all the magnificent neon, chose one piece to display (the word “Hollywood”) and even managed to destroy that, tossing out the original (gas intact!) tubing to replace it with new hot pink letters on the back side of the can.

A word, if we may, about the LAUSD. Sure, they’re a skim racket for the outfit. Big deal. We expect greed and graft and corruption from their ilk. So what? LA was built on slush funds and payoffs. That’s the downside of our culture. But what we DO object to is their blatant, outright, positively SMUG destruction of the upside of our culture! Under the guise of “let’s build fifty schools…you know, for kids” they’ve used their repeated attempted demolitions of the Ambassador Hotel as a smokescreen to race about demolishing the few buildings left in this town that makes it livable and respectable. The LAUSD acts as if they’re incompetent, while in reality they’re calculatingly bulldozing our history while clearing sites for the teeming masses to trample what’s left unchecked. Think I’m being melodramatic? Consider the 1936 KEHE Radio Building.
Rather than hire an architectural historian versed in 20th century architecture, LAUSD engaged an archaeologist from Riverside to conduct the Environmental Impact Report! Who, as you might imagine, saw no value in preserving the building or even its façade. Surprise, surprise…I think the LAUSD intended that little insult to be funny, at least to them…Guess what happened then? The LAUSD is, by law, supposed to notify the Conservancy when they submit an EIR on a potentially historic site. Oops…the LAUSD “forgot!” Out come the bulldozers! And if the disingenuous ones hadn’t had enough glee wallowing in their chicanery, they came right out and LIED to the Conservancy about “asbestos abatement” whilst they began demolition work.

Your tax dollars at work. The only way they don’t waste your money, by the way, is that when they come to take your home or business, they don’t have to give you fair market value. It’s called eminent domain. Now be quiet, citizen.

Still not scared for your home and cultural heritage? The EIR is the only avenue the public has to comment on proposed demolitions, and the only way through which the LAUSD assesses the feasibility of sensitive alterations. Therefore, they have simply DECIDED TO DO AWAY WITH IT. Instead, they’ve elected to merely file a PEIR, wherein only environmental effects of built schools matter, leaving the worry of where and to what or whom it will happen to some random folk standing, after-the-fact, staring gape-mouthed into a smoking crater. In short, they’ve decided they can demolish significant historic buildings without the annoyances of “history” or “community” or, God forbid, “art” getting in the way. All this, just in time to demolish the historic Film Exchange Building at Washington and Vermont. Go take a look now. While you can.

In the meantime, call LAUSD at 213.633.7616, or write:
Nicole Cobleigh
Los Angeles Unified Schools District
Office of Environmental Health and Safety
355 S. Grand Avenue, 15th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90071-1507

…and ask that they work to identify potentially threatened historic buildings up-front, and to utilize historic structures in their proposed campuses.

Rape-enamored petty thugs with an appetite for filthy lucre at the Southland’s expense have gutted Johnie’s Broiler in Downey.

Amazing 50s steak house Leon’s in Burbank (p. 79) is being demolished, nifty signage and all, for (shades of the Shopping Bag, above)—another Walgreen’s! Walgreen’s is tearing down a whole block of historic homes in Dartmouth, MA. They’re planting one in New Orleans in the Carrolton district, at the terminus of the St. Charles streetcar line. They hysterical shrieks and howls of cackling bulldozer-wielding Walgreen banshees still echoes through the Columbus night near the sight of the Kahiki Supper Club. Is there no stopping those who begin with “Wal”?

Also in Burbank, the amazing neon chefs at Don’s (p. 61) are no more. Fortunately, one has found a new home in the Museum of Neon Art.

Other neons haven’t been as lucky. Witner’s neon cigar near 3rd and Fairfax disappeared in the night. The Sunset Palms (p. 163) on Sunset near Formosa got a “freshening up” by new management and became the “Hollywood Studio Inn”…yuck…they even lost "Free TV", "Sorry No Vacancy", and "Air Conditioning". Callanan Mortuary (p. 139) was bought out by a conglomerate, who mandated they lose the amazing Fifties-Colonial neon in favor of backlit plastic. We lost the Oviatt hotel neon. The three-story Oldsmobile blade on Figueroa. A 1964 Arby’s chuck wagon. A giant and remarkably early 1920s Kaiser Brothers figural neon, arguably the best piece of neon automobilia in America, gone. And vandalized beyond belief? The Manning’s Coffee signage (NW corner of Figueroa and Ave. 57, in Highland Park), possibly the oldest extant neon in Los Angeles, had its opal glass torn out by, one can only assume, the owner. But that’s just speculation. He lives in China and is unavailable for comment. The Historic Preservation Overlay Zone board, which should move on the guilty parties, has done nothing. That’s why we are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the restoration of this sign!

Thank you for allowing the rant, folks. Endangered neon needs your help! We hope we’ve pointed out that it can be as small as telling a shop-owner how much you like the cool sign, to as large as fighting city hall. Everything ties together—the aforementioned Manning’s sign lies in an area that, although the community fought for years to have downzoned for livability’s sake, has been recently (without public knowledge or comment) zoned “high-density” by bureaucrats. This, so they can line their pockets not only from the new trains but from low-income housing credits and the attendant band-aid-like “neighborhood cleanup campaigns.” This means more lost neon, more razed buildings, more demolished history, and, as usual, when the money runs out and the politicos are voted away, lots of confused people with blighted streets, crappy developments, and vanished cultural urban anchors.

Preserving our historic built environment begins with you…and your favorite sign. Some call it progressive and some call it reactionary, but we think it’s just good sense; our shared civilizing memory is made up of component parts that, when lost, are gone forever, no matter how many third-rate faux-50s diners they build.

We can all play a part in a groovier, sexier Los Angeles. To the battlements!