The Flâneur & The City

For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures, In SRO Land) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill).

On this excursion we’ll be casting our eyes along on one fascinating, but underappreciated, downtown boulevard: Hill Street.

The tour begins at Alfred Rosenheim’s Hamburger’s Department Store (the People’s Store) at Eighth Street and concludes high atop Bunker Hill, with a focus on the most interesting buildings along the way, and poignant memorials for a few that have fallen to the wrecking ball. The last stop will be at Fort Moore Memorial, where Hill Street meets the 101 freeway, a drab, functional place that now occupies what was once one of the most lyrical corners of old Los Angeles. We’ll share photos of the neighborhood’s beloved funicular Court’s Flight (Angels Flight’s forgotten competition), the Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill, and explain how the Hill Street Extension of 1959 destroyed this part of Bunker Hill and took out a large part of the even more ancient neighborhood of Sonora Town.

Tour attendees will meet on the 8th floor lounge of the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The snack bar will be open, and those who wish to purchase a sandwich or beverage before the walk are encouraged to arrive 20 minutes early to avoid a bottleneck. We will start with general historic overview of Hill Street in the lounge, and then make our way to Hamburger’s–no doubt following in the path of that store’s founder Moshe Hamburger, who lived at the Athletic Club in the early years of the 20th century.

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs.

ABOUT THIS TOUR: For the fourth installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flaneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill).

On this excursion we’ll focus on several landmark buildings by the architectural firm of Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen. The firm’s significant contributions to the downtown skyline have been overshadowed by the massive structures erected since the 1957 ordinance permitting buildings to be taller than 150’. On this tour, we’ll ignore such behemoths while shining our spotlight on the modest beauties that Walker and Eisen constructed in the Historic Core.

Walker & Eisen made their mark on downtown during the building boom which immediately followed the first World War. What we think of as “Jazz Age” L.A. architecture is in large part defined by this very successful team. In the year 1923, Los Angeles recorded $185,000,000 in building expenditures. Walker & Eisen at that time employed fifty draftsmen in their office, while the great civic architectural firm Parkinson & Parkinson had just 13. In the 21 years of partnership (1920-41), Walker & Eisen were responsible for $40,000,000 worth of buildings.

Walker & Eisen were the spiritual heirs of the now-forgotten Victorian-era architects Robert A. Young & Burgess J. Reeve, who shaped Los Angeles during its early boom years and depressions, and on which our last tour focused. Standing on their shoulders, and in the shadow of C.C. Julian’s financial scandal, Walker & Eisen quietly, distinctly, and on budget, translated the hopes, dreams, and sometimes outright arrogance of their clients into beautiful meditations on surface treatment and the play between light, window and wall.

The two buildings of prime focus will be the Oviatt (1927) and the Fine Arts Building (1928). We will not be visiting the penthouse of the Oviatt, and it will be at the discretion of the building’s management if we are permitted a peek inside the the former Oviatt & Alexander haberdashery. The Fine Arts Building lobby will be open, and we plan on spending a fair amount of time in it, amongst the Batchelder tile.

While the calculus to minimize the route and maximize other Walker & Eisen buildings along its path has yet to be computed, attendees can be assured that there will be a great deal to see, and yet more to talk about.

The tour will begin in the exterior lobby of the Oviatt Building at 1:30pm. Please wear comfortable shoes and dress appropriately for the weather, as we will walking at least six blocks and possibly farther before the tour’s end.

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flaneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flaneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs.

For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill, In SRO Land).

On this excursion we’ll explore the mostly lost architectural landmarks of the Northern Historic Core, starting from 3rd & Spring, east to Main, then north to the lawn of City Hall, then westward to 2nd & Spring. Within this small footprint, we will discover some of the most fascinating structures in L.A. history, most of them quite forgotten.

The tour is inspired by the September 2011 launch of a new series on the In SRO Land time travel blog featuring archival material from the collection of the Union Rescue Mission, which presents an opportunity for exploring the lost lore of the old commercial neighborhood which was largely cleared via eminent domain in the 1920s and 1930s in order to provide a clean slate for the erection of City Hall and other government buildings. This was a precursor to the much larger and more destructive eminent domain project by which the residential neighborhood Bunker Hill was cleared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Locations on the walking tour will include Joseph Newsom’s exquisite Bryson-Bonebrake Block (1888), first two Union Rescue Mission locations, and the original “civic center” encompassing the Courthouse (1887), the Hall of Records (1911) and the State Building (1931).

To start, we will seek to answer some basic questions about the early development of downtown Los Angeles:

• Who were the architects and financiers of 19th Century Los Angeles?

•Â Which buildings were most representative of these individuals’ aims, and which were the most significant architecturally?

•Â What did the Victorian-era Angeleno think of the architecture of his city?

•Â How did architecture reflect the growth of the city?

Having established these early themes, we will start to ask questions about the emotional and spiritual core of the city of Los Angeles –-its zeitgeist—and begin to draw the connection between architecture and the city’s culture.

An example is the discussion of the Union Rescue Mission’s first two buildings at 145 N. Main Street and 226 S. Main Street. More than a century ago, the URM’s unique mission brought them to the heart of Skid Row, a place filled with characters and scenery worthy of Victor Hugo, and it keeps them there to this day. The city has twice forced a move of the URM as it seeks to “move along” the disenfranchised and those who seek to aid them. These snapshots of lost architectural spaces that were once an intrinsic part of a dynamic urban core tell us much about the tensions and forces still at play in the community.

The tour’s closing thoughts are inspired by a quote from Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”

TAKING THIS TOUR: This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs. – Reservations will be required for this free walking tour, and space is very limited for all events in this series. Reserve your space for the September 25 event by clicking “Signups” (THERE ARE NO “PLUS-ONES” – ONE RESERVATION PER PERSON, PLEASE!).

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

Urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis.The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined — from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car and walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with all your eyes.

In this installment, we will visit Olvera Street, the historic seed of Los Angeles and the first place where issues of urban preservation entered the city’s consciousness. On this free 45-minute walking tour, we’ll explore the site’s history, from the founding of the city (1781) to the present day, with a focus on the “classic” era: Christine Sterling’s nearly thirty years of preservation and reinterpretation, which resulted in the entire Plaza becoming a State park, now managed by the city of Los Angeles.

On this informative stroll through a provocative and multi-layered space, we’ll explore such key questions as:

* What core challenges, goals and strategies are shared by Christine Sterling at the Plaza in the early 20th century and the developers of downtown’s Old Bank District (4th & Main) in the early 21st century?

* Can arts and culture succeed as a tool for economic development for reinvigorating historic neighborhoods?  Was Jane Jacobs right when she proclaimed that  “new ideas need old buildings”?

* Is there a point on the continuum where the creeping kitsch of a tourist attraction overwhelms the value of a vital community space? Can a positive public space be ruined by popularity and accessibility? 

The 45-minute tour will be followed with a preview visit to downtown’s newest cultural institution, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in the old Brunswig Building just south of “La Placita” church. Here President and CEO Miguel Angel Corzo will give us a 30-minute walkthrough of the newly-refurbished site and touch on the core goals and objectives for the institution, which opens in the fall.

Space is very limited on this free walking tour, and each guest must sign up using their own name and email address–no plus ones can be accommodated. To reserve, please click “Signups” above (or at this link) and give your full name when filling out the form. If unable to attend, please cancel to free up space for another guest.

Parking will be validated for those who have signed up for the tour in the parking lot of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, just south of 501 North Main Stree (see map link). Please plan to arrive about 10 minutes before the tour starts for check in at the entrance to La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 North Main Street.