Storybook Cottages on Gower

Curbed LA link has already announced this, but I'll jump on the bandwagon too. After all, I blogged Monday about new housing on Gower.

"A bungalow court containing four cottages done in Storybook style, which was somewhat the local rage back in 1921 when owner-architect Charles B. Bell designed and built the first bungalow and when contractors Burrell & Hamrick constructed the other three in 1923." That's how Curbed LA describes the cottages at 2494 Gower, in Beachwood Canyon. And that site has a wonderful history of why and how these cottages were built the way they were, and why the Hollywood real estate market back then was so whimsical. Go read, it's fun.

The four cottages were approved for historical-cultural landmark status in December, according to the Los Feliz Ledger, from whence this picture hails. And LA Curbed cites the fact that only 42 bungalow courts out of 100 that stood in 1955 still remain in 2008's Hollywood. "And of those, only 26 were fully intact."

Reading the story, I wondered if the builders ever intended these little homes to withstand eighty or ninety years of occupancy. Probably not. The entire area was so new back then, who could have predicted a crowded metropolis like today's?

But the real story has a happy ending, and the LA Curbed article has several pictures of other storybook-style bungalows in the area.

Newsflash!!

KPCC--no doubt inspired by the same Curbed LA link that got me going--put up a small feature on Storybook Homes, and it turns out there's a book on them by Arrol Gellner, with photography by one Douglas Keister (yes, I am giggling. I have the mind of an 11-year-old). Here is the link to Amazon: