googie dingbats and bungalow YIMBYs

April 11, 2018 10:36 AM

How Los Angeles Banned Some of its Most Popular Buildings

Why LA’s bungalow courts might go extinct, some of the rapidly-disappearing Missing Middle housing types.

posted by the man of twists and turns (31 comments total)

Thanks for sharing this interesting article, though it's weird that there's only one actual photograph of any of the buildings it describes.
posted by crazy with stars at 10:45 AM on April 11, 2018 [10 favorites]

Yeah, I'm with crazy with stars -- fascinating article with some great illustrations of changing zoning rules and maps over the years -- but no photos of the banned building types!
posted by notyou at 11:19 AM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Perhaps the authors assume that everyone lives in LA... I was looking for examples.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:33 AM on April 11, 2018

I'm not a student of film, by any means, and I've never visited Los Angeles. There's one (1) bungalow court here in New Orleans of which I am aware, and the first time I drove by or through it I thought, "This seems very California right here."

(I mean, compared to the rest of the houses on St. Charles Ave.)
posted by komara at 11:33 AM on April 11, 2018

The Watts Towers are one of the most popular landmarks in LA, but the city would have gotten away with demolishing it on the pretext it was a safety hazard if an aerospace engineer hadn't shown that the Towers could withstand a 10,000 pound stress test, equal to the impact of 70mph winds. The obituary of the engineer, Norman "Bud" Goldstone, details the story.
posted by jonp72 at 11:34 AM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

“Dingbats are known for their downmarket status and inexpensive rents.”

I think they’re kind of cute, but Wikipedia disagrees.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:35 AM on April 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

For those as confused as me, a few definitions for those of us who aren't LA based architecture students might be helpful.

Also, while I sympathize with the author's point, doing away with dingbats doesn't seem like a terrible idea in a place with frequency large earthquakes.
posted by eotvos at 11:43 AM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

the difference between dingbats and bungalow courts is simple:

dingbats are terrible and bungalow courts are awesome
posted by entropicamericana at 12:15 PM on April 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Incidentally, "Bungalow Court and the Dingbats" is the name of my new band. We play doo-wop and rock-and-roll covers.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:42 PM on April 11, 2018 [14 favorites]

Maybe it's me, and my East Coast sensibilities, but I'm looking at these Dingbat buildings, both outside and inside (thanks Google Image Search), and I kinda like them. But I'm also fond of small apartments.
posted by SansPoint at 12:47 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

I wrote the forbidden city article. Here is a link to a presentation I did on the same topic. It has more images and examples.
posted by markvalli at 1:05 PM on April 11, 2018 [32 favorites]

Also, if you live in LA County and want to help legalize small apartment building where only detached single family homes are allowed, check out abundant housing LA

And if you want pro-dingbat, pro-make-it-easy-to-build-low-rise-wood-frame-apartments evangelism, check out my friend VamonosLA's posts about housing
posted by markvalli at 1:10 PM on April 11, 2018 [7 favorites]

There's a similar issue in Somerville, Massachusetts. Somerville is a popular and trendy place to live because it's unbelievably walkable with numerous stores, parks, restaurants, theaters, and art galleries all accessible by foot and bicycle paths. It's utterly charming and is the most densely populated town in New England, with more than 81,000 people in 4.2 square miles.

It also has 22 buildings that could potentially be built under its current zoning laws.

I get depressed when I think about zoning in the US.
posted by fader at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

I was looking for examples.
Dingbats Dingbats Dingbats
(I think that tumblr might be done by VamonosLA).

I stayed in an Airbnb in a bungalow court-ish type thing in San Diego a few years ago. It was very cool. Parking requirements are truly the worst. On a lark the other day I tried to sketchup floorplans for replacing my single family home on a 40x150 lot with a small apartment building that would meet height and setback requirements (the number of units and lot coverage would have torpedoed it anyway though) but even with 1 parking space per unit, cars just take up so so much space.
posted by ghharr at 1:25 PM on April 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

It seems like the bungalow court became the garden apartment, which never made any sense to me because front yards are really just for show, they really aren't more useful than a dedicated park or playspace. I never saw a garden apartment complex that used its grounds well and I don't think rent vs own is a legit distinction because some relatives had a condo garden apartment in LA and it's land use & parking were both terrible. Of course, compared to a single family home they use land more efficiently. But compared to other multifamily housing styles, they seem inefficient. Whatever. People like them so I guess they make some kind of sense.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:34 PM on April 11, 2018

The dingbats with wild ornamentation are pretty, but without that, they all look as if somebody’s died horribly in one of the apartments. I don’t mean murder, necessarily — maybe a suicide, maybe someone who died in their sleep and wasn’t missed. I’d say it’s California Gothic, but I’ve seen those things elsewhere and they remain depressing.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:39 PM on April 11, 2018

Nashville has a few very cool old small-ish apartment buildings in rich, mostly single-family neighborhoods that I'm sure would never be allowed to be built today.
posted by ghharr at 1:40 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh, hey, I remember one of those places! Used to live not far away.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:42 PM on April 11, 2018

Huh. From reading this, I just realized that one of my favorite apartments ever was a Dingbat - in the Wallingford (Seattle) neighborhood, across from the auxiliary parking lot of the Fabulous Food Giant. I had a lovely south-facing balcony, in-building laundry, and HUGE amounts of storage in the apartment (it was a 2 bedroom). I loved it mostly for the neighborhood, but being in the front of the building was great!
posted by dbmcd at 2:16 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Dingbats have a cousin in Chicago, the 4 + 1
posted by lagomorphius at 5:11 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

There is legitimately nowhere for overnight guests to legally park in Somerville. The entire place just screams "don't be here," and Im not surprised that the zoning is as blinkered as most of the rest of Boston. Yeah I said Somerville is Boston, so what?
posted by 1adam12 at 5:24 PM on April 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

OMG the Wallingford Food Giant.

I know just the building you mean, too: all through 1993 and 1994, a petite white woman in her forties, very well-dressed in a vernacular thirty years out of date, used to wait in front of that building for hours on end, compulsively dabbing her lips in rapid, birdlike gestures every ten seconds or so. She and the building both felt like someone had drawn a dotted line around them with a quantum Xacto knife and lifted them entire out of time.
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:24 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

(Great post, BTW, and I cherish bungalow courts and dingbats both.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:35 PM on April 11, 2018

I've lived in dingbats, both NorCal and South; they're great if they've been properly maintained. Sometimes I worried, about the overhang my car was parked underneath, in case of earthquake.
posted by Rash at 7:23 PM on April 11, 2018

I can see the appeal of dingbats, but from the perspective of somebody living in a neighborhood evenly divided between dingbat-style apartments with their street-facing parking spots and actor studio apartment buildings (3-5 floors of studios and bachelors) that don't offer ANY parking, those effing curb cuts and the requisite loss in street parking spots makes me a solid hater. One driveway per building, PLEASE.
posted by carsonb at 9:01 PM on April 11, 2018

Sometimes I worried, about the overhang my car was parked underneath, in case of earthquake.

Yeah, dingbats and similar soft-story apartments typically need earthquake retrofitting to meet modern requirements in earthquake prone areas. See also: What it will take to earthquake-proof L.A.’s most vulnerable apartment buildings and Nearly 9,000 ‘soft-story’ buildings in LA still need earthquake retrofits.
posted by RichardP at 9:05 PM on April 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Came for discussion of googie architecture was disappointed:(
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:12 PM on April 11, 2018

Yeah I have to say that I love my Somerville condo since to me it combines the best features of urban and suburban living - less than ten minutes walk to the subway, all errands in walking distance yet there is a yard and patio, a nice front porch, a (shared) garage and plenty of basement storage. I feel very lucky to be living here.
posted by peacheater at 12:26 AM on April 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

There is legitimately nowhere for overnight guests to legally park in Somerville. The entire place just screams "don't be here," and Im not surprised that the zoning is as blinkered as most of the rest of Boston. Yeah I said Somerville is Boston, so what?
That's not true? If you're visiting someone who lives there, they can give you a visitor's pass to park overnight that's valid for two days at a time. Each household is entitled to two. We often have overnight guests and have had no parking problems. There's also plenty of metered parking ($1 per hour) near businesses, but only between 8 am and 8 pm Mon-Sat. Outside of those times you don't have to pay so you could park overnight there too. I'm not sure what else you would suggest? I feel like our parking policies make sense for a place with such a high density of housing, little off-street parking and this a high premium on street parking spots.
posted by peacheater at 12:40 AM on April 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

Mr Elizilla and I built a new house in an established downtown neighborhood. In planning this house we had to learn all about the zoning rules. Since then we have been wandering around our neighborhood playing "spot the non-conforming structures". They are a lot of them. Probably more non-conforming than conforming.

Since our needs are modest we managed to conform and not have to request any variances. But I think a lot of the non-conforming properties are the best ones, the ones that make our neighborhood desirable. I would love it if my porch was right up next to the sidewalk instead of the required 15 feet back. I think those houses are charming and sociable, which is what I like about living here. If everything conformed it would be much less friendly feeling.
posted by elizilla at 7:43 AM on April 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

eotvos: "Also, while I sympathize with the author's point, doing away with dingbats doesn't seem like a terrible idea in a place with frequency large earthquakes."

While the old ones are going too be problematic there isn't any particular reason a modern dingbat wouldn't be seismically safe.
posted by Mitheral at 7:22 PM on April 12, 2018 [1 favorite]