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Preserving Los Angeles - Book Review
By Ann Jarmusch
September/October 2021
 Angel City Press, $50 |
A boxy, vine-covered building you never really looked at before. Surprise! Inside, Neil Young, Nirvana, and Fleetwood Mac laid down album tracks.
Early 20th-century farmhouses are all that's left of an agricultural utopian community in, of all places, the San Fernando Valley.
These are just two examples of the scores of historic buildings, and candidates for designation as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments, that were identified in the ambitious, precedent-setting SurveyLA. Teams of preservation consultants combed every street in the far-flung city of Los Angeles between 2010 and 2017. The project actually began earlier with a dream come true: the J. Paul Getty Trust partnered with the city in 2005 with a $2.5 million multiyear matching grant. At the trust's behest, L.A. first created the Office of Historic Preservation in 2006 and hired Ken Bernstein, the book's author and highly respected preservationist, to manage it. Before this project, only 15 percent of the city had been surveyed.
Bernstein writes engagingly about L.A.'s preservation journey, including what he views as the most significant catalyst and housing generator: the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance. Downtown and now other areas of the city have added thousands of new housing units in converted historic commercial buildings; cafes, shops, and entertainment followed the new residents to revitalize the neighborhood.
Bernstein writes, "…historic preservation can be an engine of positive change" and "our best method of managing change." SurveyLA is an urban planning tool and a reservoir of essential information for historic property owners and developers exploring possibilities.
To his great credit, Bernstein doesn't ignore pressing issues of our time, racism, affordable housing, gentrification, and the climate crisis. The Office of Historic Preservation has created numerous context statements for the many racial and ethnic groups that enrich the city, and it coordinates ongoing outreach to learn what places each community "cherishes." Websites give citizens easy access to SurveyLA.
Bernstein also spotlights 10 preservationists who tell their stories, like Michael Diaz, the Lincoln Heights leader who fought low-interest city loans that triggered an epidemic of neighbors stuccoing over their historic homes. And for a heady climax, this info-packed book ends with 80 pages of photos and capsule summaries of historic resources and their architects that SurveyLA brought to light. Preserving Los Angeles features every neighborhood within the city limits, Bernstein notes, "since every community has sites with remarkable architecture or cultural meaning."
The book can be found locally for sale at the Marston Museum shop.
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