• Tour of the new Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library
• Tour of the Griffith Observatory
• Visit to the LA Zoo
• Visit to Boyle Heights, including the Breed Street Shul, the Neighborhood Music School, Evergreen Cemetery, Hollenbeck Park and, nearby, Homeboy Industries
• Visit to the City Archives and Records Center
• Downtown walking tour
• Guided tour of Fern Dell in Griffith Park
• Tour and lunch at the Ebell Club and Theatre
• Visit to the Japanese Garden at the Donald C. Tillman Reclamation Plant in the Sepulveda Basin
• Visit to the Reagan Library
• Visit to the Nixon Library
• A visit/celebration at the Natural History Museum for “Becoming L.A.” opening in December 2012
• Overnight bus tour to the Owens Valley, Manzanar and other local sites along Route 395
• Tour of Hollywood Forever Cemetery
• Visit to the Bronson Caves

Stay tuned!

From the LA Conservancy:

The Conservancy needs your help to stop the demolition of the Moore House, a 1959 residence designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The final environmental impact report (EIR) for the project that would demolish the Moore House was approved by the Palos Verdes Estates Planning Commission in December.

Despite the Conservancy’s prior comments and those of nearly 300 concerned individuals, the EIR did not not include a single bona fide preservation alternative that would retain the home’s eligibility for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The Conservancy has filed an appeal of the decision to certify the EIR.

Please support our efforts by attending the Palos Verdes Estates City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 24, where a decision on the appeal will be made.

If the Conservancy’s appeal is denied, the Moore House will be demolished.

If you can’t attend, please submit your comments in writing by Thursday, April 19 at 5 p.m. to citycouncil@pvestates.org and vkroneberger@pvestates.org. Please copy mvavala@laconservancy.org on emails so we can monitor the response.

Although it should be in your own words and reflect your own experience, to be most effective, your comments should address the following points:

• The Moore House is a rare and significant historic resource, designed by the nationally recognized architect Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright), and is one of only two structures designed by him in the city of Palos Verdes Estates.
• The EIR failed to identify and evaluate a single reuse alternative that would maintain the Moore House’s eligibility as a historic resource. This is a clear problem, as the EIR must include at least one true preservation alternative.
• The Moore House can be modified and expanded in a sensitive way that would address preservation concerns as well as several of the owners’ stated project goals. Yet no such alternatives have been seriously considered.
• Please vote to uphold the Conservancy’s appeal and request that a new EIR be prepared that includes a true preservation alternative.

Visit the Conservancy’s website for more information about the Moore House and its proposed demolition. 

Thank you for your support!

Thanks to Antal Neville for passing this along to us!

California Hospital was founded in 1887 in a small and unpretentious two-story brick building on 6^th Street in Los Angeles (population 80,000 at that time) by Dr. Walter Lindley, an enterprising young man born in Indiana.  Shortly thereafter he gathered together 21 fellow physicians, who each chipped in $1,000 to buy a plot of land on South Hope Street, where they built the first physician-owned hospital in the U.S.  It opened for business at 1414 South Hope in 1898, and was an attractive four-story wood-framed structure with gables, corner cupolas, awnings over the windows and a large well-landscaped garden facing 15^th Street.  It had 30 beds.  The campus rapidly added three more buildings to house patients and facilities, employing the British-born architect John C. Austin, who also designed Griffith Observatory and many other iconic L.A. buildings.

A school of nursing, the California Hospital Training School for Nurses, was opened in 1898, and graduated its first class of four the next year.  The nursing school closed in 1984, but California Hospital still has grads and an instructor working in the hospital.  A brick apartment building now called the Villa Metropolitano, two doors north of California Hospital’s Emergency Department entrance on Hope Street, was originally the Metropolitan Hotel.  It was bought by the hospital in 1944 to house an increased number of nurses caused by the needs of World War II, and was called Moore Hall.

First building, W. 6th St.

In 1916 an enterprising group of staunch Lutherans of Scandinavian heritage from the American Midwest formed the Lutheran Hospital Society of Southern California, with the express purpose of “establishing hospitals, dispensaries and clinics.”  The Society bought California Hospital in 1921, and successfully operated it and several other L.A. and San Diego hospitals for the next 70 years.

The turn of the century brick and wood buildings proved inadequate for “modern” healthcare, and in 1926 a new nine-story brick hospital was inaugurated at 1414 South Hope Street on the site of the old buildings.  It was deemed to be the most progressive medical building in the country at that time.  It served Los Angeles well until the Northridge Earthquake of 1994 damaged it to the extent that patients could no longer be housed there, and it was demolished in 2000.  Meanwhile the current patient tower at 1401 South Grand Avenue was opened in 1987 – Tibbitts Tower, named after a much-respected hospital administrator, Samuel J. Tibbitts.

Total bed capacity at California Hospital is currently 319.  There are 65,000 emergency room visits every year, 2,200 of which are trauma patients.  About 360-400 babies a month come into this world at the hospital.  The hospital’s new Los Angeles Center for Women’s Health opened in February of this year.  Also new are extensive remodeling and upgrades to the 1414 South Hope Street Emergency Department, now underway.

California Hospital, 1989

Snippets from their history:

• In 1910 California Hospital was put in charge of setting up the first-ever emergency aviation hospital – a portable cottage equipped with an operating table – at the country’s first air meet, the Dominguez International Air Meet, at Dominquez Field south of Compton.  A horse-drawn carriage “ambulance” stood outside.
• The first X-rays taken in Los Angeles were performed at California Hospital in 1889 by Dr. Albert Soiland with equipment he built himself at home.  He was the founder of the Department of Radiology at USC’s School of Medicine.
• Dec. 24, 1914:  Internationally known and respected naturalist John Muir, aged 76, died of pneumonia at California Hospital.
• In 1917 thirty grads from the California Hospital Training School for Nurses joined the first World War I overseas nursing unit, the Naval Base Hospital Unit No. 3.
• In 1928 the cost of three days’ stay with dressings, pharmacy and extra diet charges was $16.45.
• In 1932 California Hospital served as the official Olympic Games Hospital when Los Angeles hosted the games.
• A nine-story brick building belonging to California Hospital can still be found at 1401 South Hope St., and is now Esperanza Community Housing.  It was completed in 1957 and was home to many doctors’ and dentists’ offices at that time.
• The first baby at California Hospital was born July 24, 1898.  Baby number 20,000 was born March 5, 1937; number 35,000 was little Michael Rawley on November 24, 1945; number 50,000 was Kathryn Eloise Thompson on December 12, 1950.  Labor and delivery continues to be a vibrant part of hospital activities.
• In 1944 the hospital attracted world-wide attention for its “Fathers’ Room,” equipped with a loudspeaker so dads could hear the first cries of their newborns.  In 1956 the First Voice of Junior! program was inaugurated.  Babies’ first cries were broadcast and recorded in the delivery room and sent to the fathers’ waiting room.  A phonograph record of the event was presented to the happy parents when leaving the hospital.
• PacifiCare health insurance was founded at California Hospital by its then-owner, the LHS (Lutheran Hospital Society) Corp.

For more information about California Hospital’s history or to arrange a visit to their archives, please visit http://www.supportcaliforniahospital.org or email susan.shum@dignityhealth.org.

Thanks to Judith Thompson, volunteer and former CHMC Medical Librarian, for preparing this information.

Sally Mayo Hagland is the daughter of Luther T. Mayo, building contractor on the Villa Carlotta, Chateau Elysee, Los Altos Apartments and many other splendid Los Angeles buildings. Mrs. Hagland will show her father’s photo archives and numerous other ephemera from his long career in Los Angeles.

Don Paul, a long-time resident of the Villa Carlotta, will provide a tour of the premises (wear comfortable shoes!). Louella Parsons was married in the lobby of the Villa Carlotta and lived here following her marriage.

Following tea, those who wish may cross Franklin Avenue with Mrs. Hagland for a tour of the grounds and first floor of the Chateau Elysee, former site of the home of silent film director Thomas Ince.

$5 for members, $10 for non members.

Please RSVP to Kay Tornborg (kxiaojie@att.net) by March 30th.

When:  March 7, 2012 at 7:30pm

Where:  The Huntington Library, Friend’s Hall

Can art frame the city so that we understand and acknowledge the forces that shape it? Catherine Gudis, associate professor of history at University of California, Riverside, considers this through the artists’ group Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD). Comprised of Skid Row residents, LAPD directs attention to the invisible forces of urban design: poverty and gentrification, people and movement, police action and inaction, and spaces and buildings once shaped by architects and owners but whose larger meanings now lay elsewhere.

Free. No Reservations Required.