West Adams

Fridays are our main workday here at RDesignsLA, we spend the day in the studio working on projects, or else out exploring the city. Our Friday a few weeks ago did not start out very well, with a number of unfortunate coffee-related mishaps. But, after we had finally caffeinated ourselves, and Rosemary had begun to dry off, we headed over to the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. This is an area of the city that we’ve both spent a lot of time in and have not seen much of. Rosemary has been working in the area for almost a year now, but we rarely get to spend any time here just wandering around. We had a great time learning about the neighborhood, how it was built, who has lived here, and how the past hundred and so years have treated it. Here’s a little of what we learned, hopefully you will find it as fascinating as we did.

Fitzgerald House or "Elegant Manor" built 1906 by Joseph Cather Newsom for music store mogul James T. Fitzgerald, 3115 West Adams Blvd.

West Adams is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles and at one time, one of the wealthiest. Situated south west of the downtown core, the area was developed in the late 1880s by Henry Huntington, the successful railroad tycoon and Hulett Merritt, a Pasadena industrialist. Due to the great fortunes of those settling the neighborhood, many architecturally significant buildings were built within this relatively concentrated area of the city including the University of Southern California or USC. West Adams was home to many movie stars, celebrities and notable city figures such as Edward L. Doheny, Hattie McDaniels, Fatty Arbuckle, Busby Berkeley and Louise Beavers. By the early 1900s, the population of Los Angeles was increasing exponentially. This rapid growth allowed for the expansion and development of other urban areas leading the upper class white population to trade in West Adams for Hollywood, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. The slow and steady migration west created an opportunity for the most affluent African American families to settle into the area. Within the next thirty years, West Adams became an important and vibrant center of black wealth and power in Southern California.

Golden State Mutual Life building designed by Paul Revere Williams in 1948, corner of Adams and Western boulevards.

During the late 1940s, the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, then the largest African American-owned business west of the Mississippi commissioned architect and West Adams resident, Paul Williams to build their new headquarters on the corner of Adams and Western boulevards. One of the most important black architects of his generation, Williams designed many private homes in Los Angeles and would go on to design the iconic Jet Theme Building at LAX, the Los Angeles County Courthouse, Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills as well as many other prominent buildings. 

L-R: Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943, Golden State Mutual Life building model, LAX.

A beautiful moderne structure, the Golden State Mutual Life building opened in 1948 the same year that the Supreme Court invalidated the segregationist covenants on property ownership. West Adams continued to thrive, Joe Louis was a prominent resident, Ray Charles set up his business headquarters and recording studio on Washington Boulevard, the Dunbar Hotel functioned as the hub of Los Angeles black culture and home-away-from-home for Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday and Count Basie among many others.

L-R:The Rockettes at Club Alabama in the Dunbar Hotel (The Black Music History of Los Angeles by Tom Reed), Duke Ellington at the Dunbar Hotel, graduation dinner at the Me Mo Club 42nd and Central in 1940 (photo collection of the LAPL), Shriners Parade on Central Ave. c.1951.

But change was in the air, white flight continued to accelerate, leaving the area with very little political clout and many of the larger single family houses and mansions were subdivided into apartments and rooming houses or else thrown down and replaced with larger multi-unit apartment buildings. Racial integration allowed a great number of African Americans to move into the neighborhood, but at the same time, many began to follow the migration west. Duke Ellington, who had long maintained a suite at the Dunbar, moved to the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood and others followed.

Felix Chevrolet opened in 1922 by Winslow Felix, he was a friend of filmmaker Pat Sullivan, whose animation studio created the Felix the Cat character. The iconic neon sign was erected in 1957 after the dealership moved to it's current location.

The construction of the Harbor and Santa Monica Freeways in the 1950s and 60s dealt the biggest blow to the vitality and prosperity of West Adams. The two freeways bisected the neighborhood, demolishing many of the older, more significant houses and prompted the decline of the black middle class neighborhood as a whole. Throughout this time, well-employed black Angelenos kept moving west and south, pushed out by the freeways, chasing better housing and quality of life. They left for Leimert Park, they left for Baldwin Hills, they left for the Crenshaw district. They left West Adams, a shell of its former self.

L-R:The Four Level Interchange of the Harbor Freeway nearly completed in 1949 (LA Times photo archive, UCLA), The Santa Monica Freeway under construction at LaCienega and Venice 1964, The Santa Monica Freeway under construction looking east from hoover Street 1961, official opening of the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway between the Harbor Freeway and Hoover Street June 21, 1962 (all other images LA Examiner Collection at USC).

Things began to turn around in the early 1980s, the neighborhood’s residents, still largely African American but now Latino and Asian as well, began to find better employment. With the end of the recession in the 1990s, many were able to move from being renters to buying houses in the area and fixing them up. By this time, West Adams had also become popular with artists, designers and young professionals working downtown. Mostly spared from damage during the 1992 riots, West Adams has gone through a series of ups and downs over the past few decades. Due to the abundance of historic architecture and its proximity to USC, the area has flourished lately.

L-R: Johnny's Pastrami 4331 West Adams Blvd. at night, Johnny's Pastrami neon sign during the day, Robin taking photos of the Felix Chevrolet sign.

Our Friday out in the world may not have started off very well, but I think that we ended up having a great time. Although West Adams certainly has its issues and complexities, it’s a beautiful area. The buildings both residential and commercial are fascinating. We were definitely inspired to start on a few projects virtually as soon as we got back to the studio. And it was great to get out of the car and spend some time walking around in a city so geared towards driving. We had a lot of fun discovering new (to us) places to eat and hang out that we will definitely come back to enjoy. The best part of a day like this, is discovering new layers and dimensions both within the neighborhood and within our city.

happy valentine's day

From our heart to yours...

the freeway collection

We've been having a lot of fun on our Freeway Fridays, here are some of the pieces that have resulted. 

110 Harbor Freeway

This is only the beginning of our Freeway Collection. Stay tuned to see how the collection evolves. 

Harbor and Century Freeways, Los Angeles, CA

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Hope you're having a good February!

freeway fridays!

We live in Los Angeles California, where driving is more than a means of transportation, it’s a way of life, a means of survival in an urban landscape surrounded by ribbons of roads, surface streets and freeways. We spend a great deal of our lives figuring out the best way to get from one place to another, traveling between east side and west, driving alone in gridlock and traveling together in the carpool lane.

L-R: Rosemary passing her road test!, driving around Detroit, driving in our first car!

When we first started talking about moving to L.A. after grad school, spending that much time in the car seemed crazy! We were living on campus just outside of Detroit Michigan while we attended Cranbrook Academy of Art. Rosemary had grown up in Montreal, a city with a great public transportation system and so had to sign up for AAA driving lessons while at the same time getting her masters degree. We got our first car at the beginning of our final year at Cranbrook, those first few months of practice drives were a true test of our relationship, we explored the city together, setting out in the car without a plan. It was exciting and nerve-racking! The car soon became our little bubble of space, where we could talk or plan or fight, away from roommates and studio mates. Little did we know how this would prepare us for life in L.A.

L-R: somewhere in Texas during our cross-country road trip, Robin working on our bookshelf in our new apartment, hanging out at the beach

When we arrived here, we had just completed an eight-day drive cross-country. We were exhausted. The next few months were a whirlwind, looking for a place to live, finding jobs, making furniture, trips to Ikea and Home Depot, all while doing the most un-L.A. of things, sharing a single car. We were so excited to explore a new city together, a place that neither of us had ever lived in before, that we hardly noticed the beginning of our transition, we were turning into drivers. In fact, it took us a really long time to come to that realization. We were so overwhelmed that it truly wasn’t until our second year here. Once we had a good working sense of the city, where to find things, how to get around without a GPS, we started to realize how much fun driving could be. Not to say that we don’t still get frustrated when we’re stuck in traffic on the 10 heading east at the end of a long day, or that we’ve accepted how insanely people drive when it rains, but we understand that a good deal of our lives will be spent in the car, and so we now try to use that time more wisely, discussing dinner plans, bills that need to be paid, making phone calls. It’s no surprise then that we have come up with a good number of our design ideas while stuck in traffic somewhere or looking for parking. We are inspired by the roads we travel during our daily commutes, on our way to discover new restaurants, explore new galleries or museums.

L-R: rush hour traffic on the 110 North, Los Angeles from the air, The Californians skit on Saturday Night Live.

One Friday, a few weeks ago, we came up with the idea of Freeway Fridays. We were driving along the 110 Harbor Freeway, on our way to Randy’s Donuts, a donut place that we’d always heard about but never tried, and we were talking about how we explored the city when we first got here and how crazy it was that there was still so much of the city we’d never visited. For full disclosure, we were also talking about how we had favorite freeways (yes, the Californians skit on SNL does hold more than a little truth in it!), and how driving different freeways inform how you experience different parts of the city. 

L-R: intersection of the 110 and the 105 freeways, DTLA  as seen from the 110, Randy's Donuts in Inglewood.

So, here’s the plan, every few weeks, we’re going to choose a freeway that we have or haven’t driven before, and we will explore that part of the city. Check out the built environments of overpasses and underpasses, enjoy the architecture or snack spots or vistas that we find, and take pictures (lots of pictures!) that we’ll post on Instagram or Tumblr as we go. We will venture out into parts of the city we like as well as parts of the city we’ve never been to before. In short, we’re going to see our city with new eyes.  

Our Valentine to DTLA

We fell in love with downtown virtually as soon as we arrived in Los Angeles a few years ago. We’re fascinated by both how quickly and how slowly it seems to change amid the layers of history, neglect and steps toward gentrification. We love visiting the flower market and the garment district, riding Angel’s Flight, spending time at the Central Library, and eagerly await the return of Clifton’s Cafeteria. Eventually, we’d love to move our studio somewhere downtown, but haven’t found the right place yet. One of our favorite things, is simply to walk around, enjoying the architecture, signage, and overall built environment under the shadow of snow-capped mountains and high rise beaux art and moderne buildings.

Rosslyn Hotel neon roof signs today.

When we first started talking about what we might want to make as a valentine card, we kept coming back to the idea of working with the two neon roof signs of the Rosslyn Hotel located on buildings that sit across from each other at the intersection of 5th and Main Street. We thought that they’d be perfect, since both signs include giant neon hearts as well as well as being some of our favorite neon signs in the city. They appear overhead just down the street from one of our very favorite breakfast treats, the Nickel Diner and our favorite art supply store Raw Materials. Every time we head downtown for brunch, we can’t help stopping by for art supplies and then walking over to take a look at these signs.

Rosslyn Hotels luggage tags and postcard.

Built by brothers George and Dwight Hart in 1913 at the cost of one million dollars, the Rosslyn Hotel was designed by John Parkinson, who also designed Union Station, City Hall and the Bullocks Wilshire department store among other notable buildings. The annex building across the street was built in 1923, with a marble subway connecting the two buildings underground. In those days, downtown Los Angeles was a grand destination, and the Rosslyn along with the Alexandria, the Cecil, the Huntington and the Hayward as well as other luxury hotels, accommodated film stars, businessmen and tourists from all over.

Rosslyn Hotels postcards and a still from Harold Lloyd's Safety Last filmed in Downtown L.A. in 1923

When Los Angeles began to decentralize in earnest after the second world war, the city lost a great deal of its vast public transportation system, and slowly the downtown core lost much of its early luster. Amidst the general decline of downtown, the Rosslyn Hotel hit hard times with the main building closing in 1959. The two buildings were acquired by separate owners during the 1970s and eventually joined many of downtown’s other grandes dames as little more than flop houses and residential hotels. In the intervening years, downtown Los Angeles has seen many attempts at gentrification. For the most part, these seem to appear and disappear in fits and starts. The Rosslyn Hotels have appeared in many films, music videos and television shows. Since 2009, the main Rosslyn Hotel building has been renovated and reinvented as Rosslyn Lofts and offers a mixture of market rate and affordable income micro-lofts.

DTLA Valentine Cards, Rosslyn Hotel.

We really see our magenta and red and black valentine linoleum cut cards of the Rosslyn Hotel as our valentine to downtown Los Angeles. They’re our tribute to the history behind and the future that lies ahead of the beautiful and interesting buildings that make up the heart of the downtown core.