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If you love Downtown Los Angeles, thank a preservationist. That’s because the Historic Core is a living museum of generations of activist advocacy and hard won landmarks—along with some grievous losses.Join Esotouric’s Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak and Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison, for an immersive then-and-now walking tour, scheduled to coincide with the 2024 California Preservation Conference at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.
The tour celebrates the policy makers who gave Los Angeles one of the nation’s first preservation ordinances, and Downtown its National Register districts and standalone monuments, and hisses the misguided redevelopment agents who displaced 9000 souls and bulldozed the Victorian mixed-use Bunker Hill neighborhood—leaving a dusty mesa that sat empty for years.
Stops include the Barclay Hotel on the edge of Skid Row, a 19th century gem that narrowly escaped a TikTok influencer remodel and is returning to its former use as very affordable housing. Its mellow lobby, with sculpted plaster, comic stained glass and checkerboard tile, remains much as it was when Raymond Chandler set a murder there.
In Pershing Square just across from the Biltmore, you’ll learn how English immigrant John Parkinson gave back to the city that made his fortune with a lovely pro bono urban park design—one that functioned so well that City Hall schemed to get rid of everything Angelenos loved about it.
We’ll stroll along Broadway, a neglected National Register theater district ripe to be reimagined.
And we’ll hop a ride on the Angels Flight Railway funicular, a rare survivor from Edwardian Bunker Hill, and trace the winding path that brought the little train back from oblivion repeatedly, most recently with the help of your tour guides.
We’ll trek across modern Bunker Hill in search of hints of the old neighborhood, including the exquisite polychrome and mural hung lobby of the CalEdison building, and to the Art Deco Central Library, itself nearly lost to redevelopment frenzy, where we’ll see Leo Politi’s lyrical Bunker Hill paintings.
And we’ll hear from Gordon Pattison, who grew up in his grandmother’s rooming house, about what Bunker Hill was really like, and how his family’s refusal to accept the redevelopment agency’s buyout offers led to two Pattison owned Victorians being landmarked, moved… and tragically lost.
Along the way, you’ll see some of L.A.’s finest buildings, and get to know the fascinating preservation people who have fought to protect, restore and reactivate them.
This walking tour is illustrated with rare photos you can view on your smartphone.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Grand Central Market, 315 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90013-1207, United States,Los Angeles, California
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