About 2 miles into the park... things start to get strange. A forbidding padlocked wrought-iron gate, surrounded by a low lying stone wall sits nestled on the edge of the trail.... Strange rusted debris starts to appear on the side of the paths. What looks like an old water filtration system, broken pieces of farm equipment, half buried sinks, strange concrete slabs with graffiti . A lovely little steam appears and makes delightful background noises, lizards and birds scatter about your feet. And then you see it. A burned-out overgrown concrete building completely covered with graffiti. Cartoon of Hitler? Check. Declaration of undying teenage love? Check.... The bunker of the building is exposed and filled with trash; a metal cage sits menacingly in the corner, and outside a series of stone steps wind up to what seems to have once been a sustenance garden. The steps then continue all the way to the top of the canyon (3,000 steps in all) and ghosts of America Nazis patrolling the wilds fill your head. Baby, we aren't at the Grove anymore... We are at the Los Angeles Nazi Compound! Well, it's actually
the ruins of a small community built by Nazi sympathizers, in
the hills outside of greater Los Angeles.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 19, 2012 -
50 comments
The Jackie Robinson of architecture. An orphaned African American boy from downtown Los Angeles,
Paul Revere Williams wanted to be an architect, and when he mentioned his career goal the high school guidance counselor ”stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars...
Whoever heard of a Negro being an architect?”. Therefore, Williams learned to read and draw upside down -- he knew that white clients would not sit next to him --
graduated from USC and in 1924 became the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi. In a
50-year long extraordinary career, he designed landmarks like the
Theme restaurant at
Los Angeles International Airport (with
Welton Becket), the
LA County Courthouse, the
Hollywood YMCA,
Saks Fifth Avenue in
Beverly Hills, restored the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some of his most interesting buildings, like the
La Concha Motel in
Las Vegas have either been
razed to the
ground or, like the "
Batman house", aka
160 S San Rafael mansion in Pasadena, have been destroyed by fire. Now, Williams' historic
Morris Landau House has been
cut into 21 separate pieces and sits in a Santa Clarita storage yard,
rotting away. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jul 2, 2006 -
25 comments
The most modern home built in the world. "From the outside it looks
like a spaceship you cannot enter. But if you go inside, it feels very cozy… very Zen and calming. Maybe because you are
floating above the city, in the sky".
John Lautner's
Chemosphere residence is the product of a
fortuitous union of architect, client, time and place.
Leonard Malin was a young aerospace engineer in late-1950s L.A. whose father-in-law had just given him a plot north of Mulholland Drive, near Laurel Canyon. The only catch: at roughly 45 degrees, the slope was all but unbuildable. Lautner sketched a bold vertical line, a cross, and a curve above it. "Draw it up," he told his assistant.
Now publisher
Benedikt Taschen owns Chemosphere (NSFW), and after 20 years of neglect the house has been beautifully
restored (.pdf) by
Frank Escher.
posted by matteo
on Apr 7, 2005 -
24 comments
