Southwest Museum Support Groups

From the 110 Freeway, the Southwest Museum looks impressive. Charles Fletcher Lummis, once the Los Angeles city librarian who edited the forerunner of Westways Magazine, founded it and began construction in 1913, supported by a "Southwest Society."

Lummis was a character and a half, in love with the romance of this area. This picture of him at age 24 (from the Autry website) was taken after he'd walked to California from Cincinnati, about 3500 miles.

Back to the Museum, though.

The Southwest Museum holds a quarter million artifacts of Native American origin--but has only enough room to display 2% of them. One of the reasons the Museum was up for grabs 4 years ago (The Autry now owns it) was that the museum building itself, physically run-down, put those artifacts at risk.

The Museum has been closed pending renovations, and that's expected to last till 2010--according to the website, which gives an overview of the damages done by flooding and insect infestation. The problems with the building and the preservation of the artifacts concerns everyone, but the Autry's responsibility and it's handling (not to mention placement) of the collection raises hackles in some circles.

That's all confusing enough. But newspapers now announce the birth of a new "Southwest Society" to raise money for renovations and expanded display space in the Southwest Museum. Huh? Wasn't that what the Autry was supposed to do? And weren't there grants and . . . all that stuff to pay for it? Definitely confusing.

Mayor Villaraigosa, Assembly Speaker Fabio Nunez are on board with the new Southwest Society, along with City Councilman Jose Huizar, Supervisor Gloria Molina, and others (the list is unofficially published at the Yahoo Group NELA). The Autry will provide staff for their fundraising activities.

Hopefully, they will issue a statement on the Autry site explaining what's going on, so that museum-lovers in Los Angeles will understand.

Here are some websites o' interest about Lummis and his museum:

• CharlesLummis.com, promoting a prize-winning biography of Lummis, with lots of pictures and data
  
• A 2005 article from LA Weekly about the Autry-Southwest agreement, exploring the question of cultural piracy.
  
• Friends of the Southwest Museum wants expanded space in a rennovated Southwest Museum. They are not mentioned in the new Southwest Society blurbs.

They're Everywhere . . .

Even at the Huntington, skulking around outside the Archives show!

You know how you feel when you walk into a museum lobby, really excited about the exhibit you're going to visit--but there, in front of you, are three busloads full of ten-year-olds hooting at each other?

I like kids, but not in dozens. And not in front of me at museums.

Anyway, rounding a corner and seeing a bevy of red hats is kind of like that.

Last Sunday in September

An embarrassment of riches is offered to Angelenos with a love of history or place this weekend. Apart from the Huntington Garden's free display of area archives on Saturday (starting at 10:30), there are these things to do on Sunday, the 30th:

• 31st Annual Simon Rodia Watts Tower Jazz Festival, at the Watts Towers Art Center. Call 213-847-4646 for info. 10-6 pm, at 1727 E. 107th Street.


• Textile, Costume and Clothing Show. Antique fabrics, jewelry, vintage clothes, quilts! At the Pickwick Gardens, 1001 Riverside Drive, Burbank. No website; phone 310-4445-2886 for info. 9-3 pm. Costs $5 with ad from L.A. Times' Home section.


• Japanese Gardens Tour, sponsored by the LA Conservancy. A drive-yourself tour of several sites, most notably the Storrier-Stearns Garden in Pasadena. Call 213-623-2489 for info. 10-4 pm. Costs $30.



• Grand Avenue Festival, the 4th Annual Street Fair. No phone, but great website. Grand between Temple and 5th Street. This actually runs all weekend, and on Sunday it's open 11-5 pm. Free.


• Swerve Festival at Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd. and other locations--see their schedule. From 12-6ish. Some events free, others not.


• West Hollywood Book Fair at West Hollywood Park. 323-848-6515 for info. Starts at 10 am, free.


• Abbott Kinney Street Festival, around Abbot Kinney and Venice Blvd. 10-6 pm, free.


• Last day of the L.A. County Fair, with Earth, Wind and Fire performing!


• Knott's Halloween Haunt starting! OK, it's not LA but go anyway. 714-220-5000.

City History in Two Volumes

A dedicated archivist (is there any other kind?) named Hynda L. Rudd somehow managed the production of a huge book titledThe Development of Los Angeles City Government -- An Institutional History 1850-2000.

The L.A. Times carries the story, describing how Rudd poured through the city archives, from "1769, when Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola's expedition reached the area, only to be greeted by a strong earthquake."

Three dozen historians worked on the project. The book's chapters cover Los Angeles city's "debt, taxation and revenue; the city's justice system, police and fire departments; city planning and 20 other major topics."

I'm not going to buy a copy or read it, but I am sincerely grateful that there are people in the world who will collect, sort, and publish such information for those of us who might want to look it up some day.

For those who do expend the $100 for the limited edition, the Times story hints at some fascinating tales based on archival research, with scholars like Leonard Pitt and Jennifer Koslow contributing essays, and Tom Sitton serving as senior editor. It can be ordered through Loyola Marymount University, according to the Times, though no website has been provided yet.

Lankershim Hotel

In an earlier post about population density, I mentioned the Lankershim Hotel. That building was on the corner of Broadway and 7th.

Before the hotel was begun in 1902, there was a vineyard. Yup--that's according to On the Old West Coast, Further Reminiscences of a Ranger by Horace Bell--who never lied or exaggerated, lol.

Bell wrote that that the 7th and Broadway site was the home and vineyard of Judge Wilson Hugh Gray--a well-respected man who had personally hidden and saved many Chinese men during the massacre of 1849 (there was a massacre in 1871; not sure what Bell meant).

The Lankershim Hotel, all nine stories of it, was completed in 1905 as an imitation of the Hotel St. Francis in San Francisco--far superior to any other hotels in L.A. at the time.

It had 200 servants, 250 rooms, and 160 baths.

Seismic studies apparently finished the hotel before its 80th birthday. In the mid 1980s, the order was signed to bring down the top seven of its nine floors. No one had lived in them for years because they'd been deemed unsafe since the 1971 Sylmar quake.

None of it's real

A quote from the HereInVanNuys blog:

What kind of a city would LA be if it had $450 billion to spend on public transportation, law enforcement, open space preservation, fine schools and health care?

$450 billion being roughly the amount budgeted for the Defense Dept in the 2006 budget. It's actually $453 billion, which coincidentally is the exact same number that the US has spent on the Iraq and Afghan Wars, combined, according to the National Priorities Project.

And to take your mind off that, here's another LA County Fair picture. Because budget critiques go so much better with cotton candy.

Los Angeles Submerged

If the sea rises by a meter over the next hundred years (as scientists predict it will), how does that affect Los Angeles?

A report from Arizona University's Dept. of Geosciences has kicked off a flurry of news stories. Accompanying maps show how coastlines around the world will be affected by the one meter rise.

At first glance, Los Angeles appears to be off the hook, but zoom in closer. The red areas indicate low areas that will be submerged by a one-meter rise in sea level. White areas show the population density.

Instructions for reading the map are intimidating, and the map takes forever to load.

If you're interested, the Netherlands is soggy toast. Better go see Amsterdam while you can.

Nobody Walks in L.A.

Los Angeles has 6,500 miles of street--did you know that?

Emily Gabel-Luddy is now head of L.A.'s Urban Design Studio.--not a museum, gallery, or home decor business, but a division of the city's Planning Department tasked with creating more appealing public outdoor spaces. Read a Q&A with Gabel-Luddy in The Planning Report.

Christopher Hawthorne's "Stepping Out" article in West Magazine (L.A. Times) describes her job concisely: "to make Los Angeles work for pedestrians."

In addition to a L.A. Public Works Walkability Questionnaire that walkers are encouraged to complete online, The Times/West also maintains links to a Walkability Checklist and an accompanying explanation. It's long-winded but makes sense: Buildings should be interesting to walkers, with views inside, or landscaping, or murals, rather than plain brick walls. Trees, street lighting, sidewalk-level entrances=good.

Thoroughfares are not about moving traffic any more. We seem to running out of feasible choices and smack into a brick wall there.

Hawthorne wistfully proposes:

"The only way major boulevards are going to work for the L.A. of the future is if the city makes them dramatically less efficient—at least as automotive arteries. Once the cars slow down, the walkers will come."

I wish. Re-engineering the city of Los Angeles, after decades of designing for motorists who simply want a parking structure near their destination so they don't have to walk, is a huge project.

But one element is not highlighted in these articles: Long term commitment.

A pedestrian-friendly Los Angeles has been proposed before--not yesterday, but over the decades. It becomes a trendy thing to talk about for awhile, then is dumped the next time an election flips the city management. All the PR in the world is not going to put plans into action if those plans are discarded by the next mayor/city council/appointee.

There are so many examples of pedestrian areas that work. Beach cities throughout the county are wonderful places to walk. So are many shopping centers with fountains, and large parks. Go to Claremont, Hermosa Beach, Pasadena, even Westwood. These places work now for the same reason they worked 50 years ago: long-term ideas about how the cities should be built and rebuilt.

Lakewood: Baby Boomer City

In the mid-80s, the Lakewood Mall was a fun place to shop and eat. I haven't been back in decades, literally, but a press release announces that Costco is about to move in as the Mall's anchor store, filling in a vacant former Macy's--which I suspect was originally the May Company, built in 1951 and pictured at right.

The new Costco will be at the southeast corner of Lakewood and Del Amo and should look like this:

Per the City of Lakewood, this is the first Costco in SoCal to affix itself to a neighborhood mall, although there are many such Costco stores in other states. It will make the Lakewood Mall "the largest enclosed shopping center in the Los Angeles-metro area." At least for a month.

The picture below at left, btw, is of the year before--1950--when no mall, and no Lakewood, existed. The picture looks west--I think from the mall site.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary a few short years ago, the city has gathered a lot of personal histories from residents, some handwritten, and put them on its website as pdfs.

Lakewood was a fully-planned postwar city. In 1949, it didn't exist. By 1954, it did.

THE BOOK on Lakewood is Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, by D. J. Waldie. Holy Land won awards when it came out in 1996, and has been updated.

It was written by a Lakewood city official whose parents bought a tract home in the 1950s.

Here's a last picture: Wanna-be suburbanites walking through the model homes of "Lakewood Park" tract in 1951. All these pictures and more are part of the city's website.

Pole Dance at Bunker Hill

Dragon Wars . . . It may be the most gawd-awful movie since Godzilla Versus Megalon, but this is a cool picture! (double click for bigger view. . . is that slime on the tower?)