LA History

This provocative Esotouric sightseeing tour begins Downtown and works its way south through Maywood, Bell Gardens, and Downey, exploring off-the-beaten-path landmarks that have had enormous influence on the cultural life of Southern California and the world beyond.

Turning the predictable idea of a Los Angeles architecture tour on its head, this excursion goes into areas not traditionally associated with the important, beautiful or significant, raising issues of preservation, adaptive reuse and urban planning. The locations all speak to the power, mutability and reach of Southern California as a creative engine.

Some of the tour stops are:

Canning Hardware and the Ed “Big Daddy” Roth studio

In the 1950s, this modest stretch of Slauson Avenue was ground zero for Southern California high performance and hot rod culture. Here we’ll show how aerospace, social mobility and teenage ingenuity transformed the automotive industry and created new modes of self-expression that would have an international influence.

Casa de Rancho San Antonio / Henry Gage Mansion

One of the oldest adobe structures in Los Angeles County (built c.1840), this Bell Gardens landmark was built by the Lugo family, whose land holdings spread into the city of South Gate, named for the property’s southern border. This fascinating residence on the banks of the Rio Hondo River is now entirely surrounded by a mid-century trailer park. Between the layers of historical context are revealed the history of local migration and population growth, from Spanish land grants to the dust bowl to the vast waves of subdivided suburbs. From a public space outside the property, tour host Richard Schave will share the strange tale of the seldom seen mansion, and his years-long efforts to make this California landmark accessible to the public.

McDonald’s Franchise #2, Downey

The platonic ideal of a Google-style roadside hamburger stand and the oldest McDonald’s franchise still standing, this National Register landmark sports several unique features: integrated golden arches framing Stanley Meston’s classic walk-up restaurant design, an enormous neon Speedee character sign, and deep fried apple pie still available for your noshing pleasure. The story of why there is a McDonald’s on this particular corner and how it still looks so cool will amaze you.

Downey High School & Carpenters Apartments

A musical interlude to highlight the hit parading pride of Downey, Richard & Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters and their deep community roots. Growing up steeped in the space race that was run in their backyard, they’ll go on to produce one of the greatest UFO-themed singles ever, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft,” and invest in a charming set of 1970s multi-family real estate still decorated with pop star branding.

Columbia Memorial Space Center

Recently erected on the edge of the former Downey Space Plant facility, an aerospace landmark that was demolished for redevelopment as a mall, this museum and gift shop serves as a base for understanding the vast infrastructure and industry that was the engine that powered the space race, and radically transformed Southern California culture.

Harvey’s Broiler, Downey

Harvey’s was a glowing stop on the mid-century South Los Angeles teenage car cruising circuit, its international influence on fashion, design and pop culture immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his essay “The Hair Boys.” That would be enough to grant Harvey’s a spot on this tour. But Harvey’s is also a landmark of historic preservation activism. After a section of the beloved drive-in was illegally demolished by a tenant, the community demanded it be rebuilt exactly as it had been, holding their elected officials accountable to ensure that happened. Today, it’s a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, still a favorite stop for cruisers, families and preservation people who need a little boost in the throes of a tough campaign. If Harvey’s can come back, so can _.

Housing of Medical Emergencies (H.O.M.E.) facility at Rancho Los Amigos Southern Campus / Los Angeles County Poor Farm

This enormous compound was originally known as the Los Angeles County Poor Farm, established in 1888 as a rehabilitation facility providing work, housing and medical care for the indigent. The period of greatest construction was the 1920s, with notable structures in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The now-vacant historic buildings are unfortunately popular with trespassing “urban explorers” and ghost hunters, which may explain several recent major fires. The south side of the old campus is slated for redevelopment, a project which is expected to include the preservation and adaptive reuse of some of the historic structures. In the midst of the southern campus, The Assistance League of Downey in 1997 established the Housing of Medical Emergencies (H.O.M.E.) facility, a 10-unit apartment complex which provides temporary, low-cost housing to families who have loved ones rehabilitating at the adjacent Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, on what was the north side of the Poor Farm. During this stop, we will pay a visit to H.O.M.E. and enjoy perimeter views of the remaining historic structures on the southern campus of the old Poor Farm.

This tour is just one of Esotouric’s California Culture tour series (formerly known as the Reyner Banham Loves L.A. series).

First things first: this is not a tour about beautiful buildings, although they’ll be all around us. Nor is it a tour about brilliant architects, although we’ll gaze upon their works and marvel. What the Lowdown on Downtown is, is a deeply researched “warts and all” history, with a focus on urban redevelopment, public policy, protest and political power.

It is the revealing tale of how the New Downtown became an “overnight sensation” after decades of behind the scenes work by public agencies and private developers. This complicated story will fascinate and infuriate, break your heart and thrill your spirit. So get on the bus for the real Lowdown on Downtown, as no one but Esotouric’s Richard Schave, also the founding director of the Downtown L.A. Art Walk, can reveal it. Our tour begins in the corporate public spaces of Bunker Hill and Pershing Square, each the result of deliberate social engineering. Bunker Hill’s redevelopment displaced 9,000 people, the largest eminent domain land seizure in American history.

Down the hill, we find the formerly positive public space of Pershing Square paved over, rendering downtown’s “living room” into a place where even the indigent become architecture critics. In the historic core, we’ll explore the tragedy of St. Vincent Court, a thriving open-air restaurant district hobbled by the interests of rival property owners. Then down Broadway and Spring Street, where adaptive reuse and the monthly Art Walk have brought life to spaces which have been dead for decades, even as Broadway’s longtime Latino vendors are leaving in droves. The tour concludes in the Arts District, with the bold urban explorers who reclaimed vacant warehouse space at great personal risk, the public policy shift that legalized this creative community, the astonishing growth of the “new” Arts District and what it means for the artists who remain.

WHY “THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN?” – Having studied under architecture critic Reyner Banham in the mid-1980s, tour host Richard Schave has taken it upon himself to correct his teacher’s gross oversight of downtown Los Angeles, relegated to a dismissive coda in his seminal Los Angeles guidebookLos Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Richard and his wife Kim Cooper work extensively with the history and lost cultures of downtown in their bus tours, in their work placing Art Walk into a non-profit, on blogs including On Bunker Hill, In SRO Land and 1947project, and through public lectures on the subject. This tour has a significant walking component. It is broken up, but please be advised to be ready to stretch your legs.

Locations on the tour typically include the following (check the listing for the date you’re interested in booking for special additions):

• Angels Flight
• Pershing Square
• Bunker Hill
• St. Vincent Court
• Bradbury Building
• Grand Central Market
• Mercantile Arcade Building
• Bloom’s Square
• The Dutch Chocolate Shop.

This tour is just one of our California Culture tour series (formerly known as the Reyner Banham Loves L.A. series).

“This tour… has established itself as an L.A. classic.” -The Los Angeles Times

The Black Dahlia murder in 1947 is the most compelling unsolved crime Los Angeles has ever known. What Jack the Ripper is to London, the Torso Killer to Cleveland, the Black Dahlia is to L.A. And yet unlike those other cases, the name Black Dahlia refers not to the killer, but to the victim. What was it about Elizabeth Short that keeps her the object of obsessive fascination by writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, cops and readers, more than sixty years after she was slain?

Esotouric’s The Real Black Dahlia Crime Tour seeks to answer this question by intimately exploring the last weeks of Elizabeth Short’s life, asking not “who killed her?” but “who was she?”

The tour takes us from the human hustle of Main Street to the serene lobby of the Biltmore (the second-to-last place she was seen alive), to the newspaper offices and the Greyhound station where she checked her bags, and concludes at the site where her bisected body was found in Leimert Park and with a little known suspect who lived nearby.

From the few personal possessions she left behind to the friends who scarcely knew her, from the mass hysteria of the investigation with its fruitless leads, wacko suspects and false confessions, the tour reveals all that’s known about this enigmatic black-haired girl who reinvented herself at whim, and shows how she came to be the unfortunate symbol of her time and place.

From the founding of the city through the 1940s, downtown was the true center of Los Angeles, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. After many quiet decades, downtown is making an incredible return. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their human context has been lost. This tour aims to revive the ghosts that cling to the bricks and alleyways.

The Hotel Horrors section is a true crime and oddities tour featuring some of the wildest, weirdest, goriest and most memorable happenings in historic hotels like the Alexandria, St. George, Barclay and Cecil. See inside some of these legendary locales and find out where Night Stalker Richard Ramirez dumped his blood-soaked clothing and where Canadian tourist Elisa Lam fell off the map, see the hotel that saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher and the one where two traveling chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their deaths. You’ll also explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled one building. Included are some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore go down.

The Main Street Vice section celebrates the social history of the ribald, racy, raunchy old promenade where the better people simply did not travel, but kicks were had by all who did. Burlesque babes and dirty picture parlors, mummified western outlaws and old time tattoo parlors, wax museums and pawn brokers, “professors” offering sex lectures and magazine peddlers with nudie Marilyn Monroe calendars under the counter, sophisticated steak houses and nickel donut dives — these were the pleasures and the people to be found along Main during the first half of the 20th century. We’ll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

This “downtown double feature” tour is especially recommended for residents curious about their neighborhood’s neglected history, and anyone fascinated by grim crimes and gorgeous architecture.

Wilshire Boulevard is an iconic Los Angeles thoroughfare—from its prehistoric origins as a path forged by extinct megafauna to the spectacular Art Deco monuments of the Miracle Mile. It’s also ground zero for some deeply strange, only-in-Los Angeles crimes and oddities that played out against the backdrop of the boulevard.

Esotouric is proud to present a brand new crime bus tour whose deceptively simple route contains a multitude of mysteries. For cruel plots, divine inspiration, historic preservation, love gone sour, lucky breaks and weird tales, join us on the Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip, a dark day’s out among the city’s most glittering architectural gems.

The Crown City masquerades as a calm and refined retreat, where well-bred ladies glide around their perfect bungalows and everyone knows what fork to use first. But don’t be fooled by appearances. Dip into the confidential files of old Pasadena and meet assassins and oddballs, kidnappers and slashers, Satanists and all manner of maniac in a delightful little tour you WON‘T find recommended by the better class of people! From celebrated cases like the RFK assassination (with a visit to Sirhan Sirhan’s folks’ house), Eraserhead star Jack Nance’s strange end, black magician/rocket scientist Jack Parsons’ death-by-misadventure and the 1926 Rose Parade grand stand collapse, to fascinating obscurities, the tour’s dozens of murders, arsons, kidnappings, robberies, suicides, auto wrecks and oddball happening sites provide a alternate history of Pasadena that’s as fascinating as it is creepy. Passengers will tour the old Millionaire’s Row on Orange Grove, thrill to the shocking Sphinx Murder on the steps of the downtown Masonic Hall and discover why people named Judd should think twice before moving to Pasadena.

Bungalows. Crime. Hollywood. Blondes. Vets. Smog. Death.

This was Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, which resonated under deft and melancholy fits from his writer’s bow.

Join us as we go down the mean streets that shaped his fiction, and that in turn shaped his hard-boiled times, in a four hour tour of downtown, Hollywood and surrounding environs: The Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Larry Edmunds Bookshop, the Hotel Van Nuys, Paramount Studio’s gates, and much, much more, including a Chandler-themed gelato stop at East Hollywood cult favorite Scoops.

Through published work, private correspondence, screenplays and film adaptations, we trace Chandler’s search for meaning and his anti-hero Philip Marlowe’s struggle to not be pigeonholed or give anything less than all he has, which lead them both down the rabbit hole of isolation, depression, and drink.

Exclusive on this tour: the fascinating story of Raymond Chandler’s lost comic operetta The Princess and the Pedlar, a bombshell in Chandler studies, discovered by our own Kim Cooper in 2014.

Tour passengers will have the opportunity to purchase an autographed copy of co-host Kim Cooper’s mystery novel The Kept Girl, inspired by this tour and starring the young Chandler and the real-life Philip Marlowe on the trail of a cult of murderous angel worshippers, as well as the new Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles.

New from the deranged minds of Esotouric, an historical crime bus tour meant to honor the lost souls who wander the hills and byways of the “streetcar suburbs” (Echo Park, Silver Lake, Elysian Park, Angeleno Heights) that hug Sunset Boulevard. Climb aboard to see seemingly ordinary houses, streets and commercial buildings revealed as the scenes of chilling crimes and mysteries, populated by some of the most fascinating people you’d never want to meet. Featured cases include Edward Hickman’s kidnapping of little Marion Parker and the bizarre “Man in the Attic” love nest slaying, plus dozens of incredible, forgotten tales of Angelenoes in peril. Guests will also see some of the most beautiful historic architecture in Los Angeles, including a visit to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson’s exquisite Parsonage, her one-time home, now a museum.

“This bus tour… has established itself as an L.A. classic.” -The Los Angeles Times

The Black Dahlia murder in 1947 is the most compelling unsolved crime Los Angeles has ever known. What Jack the Ripper is to London, the Torso Killer to Cleveland, the Black Dahlia is to L.A. And yet unlike those other cases, the name Black Dahlia refers not to the killer, but to the victim. What was it about Elizabeth Short that keeps her the object of obsessive fascination by writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, cops and readers, more than sixty years after she was slain?

Esotouric’s The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour seeks to answer this question by intimately exploring the last weeks of Elizabeth Short’s life, asking not “who killed her?” but “who was she?”

The tour takes us from the human hustle of Main Street to the serene lobby of the Biltmore (the second-to-last place she was seen alive), to the newspaper offices and the Greyhound station where she checked her bags, and concludes at the site where her bisected body was found in Leimert Park and with a little known suspect who lived nearby.

From the few personal possessions she left behind to the friends who scarcely knew her, from the mass hysteria of the investigation with its fruitless leads, wacko suspects and false confessions, the tour reveals all that’s known about this enigmatic black-haired girl who reinvented herself at whim, and shows how she came to be the unfortunate symbol of her time and place.