EVERY DAY, ANOTHER LINK TO OUR PAST just seems to go away. Sometimes it’s a favorite restaurant, market or store that’s closing. Some are just “old friends” while others have real historic value.
The 37-year-old National Theater in Westwood Village, one of my favorite and among the best movie houses in the country, recently closed it’s doors and will make way for — you got it — an ugly mini-mall with designer jeans and tchotchke shops. A couple of theater lovers have applied for landmark status with the City of Los Angeles to try and preserve it. Most likely, the designation won’t pass muster. Although it’s a magnificent 1,100-seat movie house with a huge curved screen and a bone-chattering THX sound system, aside from a number of movie world premiers, it’s really not historic.
The Nu Wilshire Theater in the 1300 block of Wilshire Boulevard here in Santa Monica is also up for landmarking. Property owner, Soundview Investment Properties, has terminated Landmark Theaters’ lease, turned off the projectors and plans to convert the place into retail space for a blue jeans shop.
I remember the Wilshire Theater when it was a big, single screen theater. It was remodeled and divided in half in the mid- 1970s resulting in two unattractive and uncomfortable shoe boxes. Nevertheless, the Nu Wilshire was popular with cineastes of the unusual and offbeat in film. It’s going through the landmark process now, even though much of the original detailing, marquee and architectural features are gone.
The Aero Theater on Montana Avenue, built by Donald Douglas in 1939 is still operating and as a wonderfully refurbished, state-of-the art single auditorium theater. Surprisingly, it isn’t even on the city’s historic inventory.
The Zucky’s sign at 431 Wilshire Boulevard is a city landmark. The only thing “historical” about the delicatessen itself was that it was a hangout for City Hall activists and local politicians in the 1970s. When its parking lot was sold for a public housing project years ago, Zucky’s closed. To me, there’s nothing historical, special or unique about the Zucky’s sign — the last remnant of an old deli.
In Ocean Park, property owner, Mark Woolen is seeking design approval for a 1,213-square-foot one and two floor addition on the backside of a single family residence at 2617 Third St. — in the Third Street Historic District. The original front house, built in 1905, is a “contributing structure to the historic district.” Woolen’s proposed modern addition is defined as a “noncontributing structure.”
This project is the subject of heated debate among neighbors and preservationists who say Woolen’s contemporary addition will “ruin” the historic district which is characterized by Victorian and Queen Anne style, single family homes. The Landmarks Commission will consider Woolen’s request at their Dec. 10 meeting. Let’s hope they just say “no” and keep the district “pure.”
I’m wondering about the four, contiguous, Victorian and Queen Ann single family homes on 14th Street between Wilshire Boulevard and Arizona Avenue. According to the City Planning Department, no landmark applications have been filed. Is this a mini-historic district waiting for preservation? If there’s no move to save them, they will succumb to the wrecker’s ball.
The current “historic preservation” controversy is still about the ficus trees on Second and Fourth streets in downtown. Treesavers, an ad-hoc tree hugger group, is now attempting to “save” some (or all?) of these run-of-the-mill trees from relocation or removal by landmarking them.
The only trees in danger of outright removal are the 23 ficus that are public safety hazards. Architect and another Treesavers spokesperson, Dan Jansenson, in a letter to the SMDP, (“C’Mon Bauer, hug a tree already,” Page 4, Nov. 14.) says Treesavers want to save “31 (and possibly more)” trees.
The vast majority of the Second and Fourth streets trees have been saved and Jansenson even states, “trees proven to be a hazard, in fact, should be removed.” But some, if not all, of the unspecified “group of trees,” that Jansenson says “are of great significance” and should be declared “historic” are designated for relocation to fill in the canopy at Second and Fourth streets locations as well as in other parts of the community. In other words, “relocated” just like the “landmark” Victorian home housing Angel’s Attic that was approved for relocation last week (for the third time in its 113 year history) from Colorado Avenue to Heritage Square.
In the meantime, the Treesavers are out on a limb and barking up the wrong trees. These ficus don’t meet ANY of the criteria for landmark protection. This “mountain out of a molehill” is about milking publicity, ego and self-aggrandizement. Stretching it out for yet another month (when this will be back before the Landmarks Commission in December) is beating a dead horse.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.