Why Did It Take a Fire for the World to Learn of Altadena's Black Arts Legacy?

New York Times

20-02-2025

Before the Eaton fire raced across Altadena, destroying more than 9,000 of its buildings, many, even in nearby Los Angeles, barely knew of the place's existence. This sleepy 42,000-person hamlet hugging the glowing foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains is not part of that city but an unincorporated community of Los Angeles County, and just far enough off the beaten track to blissfully avoid notice.
Once typified by its bucolic quirkiness, tight-knit neighborhoods and generations-old churches and businesses, Altadena now consists of row after row of twisted, charred building remains, scorched car chassis, blinking or broken stoplights and the occasional khaki National Guard Humvee. The future, for now, is filled with toxic cleanup, insurance adjustments and conflicting visions for rebuilding.
Yet the past has gained newfound prominence. With so much gone, Altadena's histories are being unearthed, by residents, scholars and preservationists who say they may hold a key to making this a special place once again, and provide anchors for those weighing whether to stay.
One of the most profound of Altadena's legacies — its spectacular story of Black creative culture — had been buried not only under its seclusion, but also under layers of racial and institutional apathy, the loose accounting of informal memory, and the absence of formal plaques and other preservation markers. The fire has spurred calls for a more rigorous approach to remembrance.
'Sometimes it takes a tragedy for people to mark history,' said Brandon Lamar, president of the N.A.A.C.P.'s Pasadena branch, whose own home was destroyed, as was his school, his grandparents' home and their church. But that destruction, he noted, 'does not mean that we can't create public memories in spaces now, so that people can remember this information for generations to come.'
Starting in the 1950s and '60s, the west side of Altadena (and parts of neighboring northwest Pasadena not bulldozed for the 210 and 134 Freeways) drew middle-class Black families eager to buy homes.
Many came because the redlining — discriminatory lending by banks — was less severe here, and some of the schools had been integrated comparatively early. The area became a magnet not just for Black teachers and social workers but also for Black artists from around the country, drawn to its affordability, inventive vibe, gorgeous mountain backdrop and general spirit of permissiveness.
'It had this energy of bohemian California,' said Solomon Salim Moore, assistant curator of collections at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. 'You could have a little less scrutiny and a little more room to do your projects.'
On Feb. 22, as part the Frieze Los Angeles art fair, a discussion called 'Land Memories' will feature artists' recollections of this unique legacy. The talk will be co-hosted by the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, which will also share oral histories recorded from Altadena artists and residents, and collect new histories.
Moore, who is also an artist, grew up in Altadena and said that its nonconformist spirit has endured to the present, even as prices have climbed and the Black population has fallen, according to the U.C.L.A. Bunche Center for African American Studies, to about 18 percent from 43 percent in 1980. Artists here, he said, loved that they could set up informal studios or even family compounds, or that they could enjoy little freedoms like hosting parties without friends worrying about permit parking.
'Sometimes creative people need to step away because you need to get out of the light to see,' said Ian White, an artist, teacher and the son of Charles White, the renowned painter and printmaker whose haunting depictions of African Americans, their struggles and dignity, inspired generations of artists. He spent the last 20 years of his life in Altadena and is buried at the community's Mountain View Cemetery. Ian lives in a house next to his father's modest home (which he also owns) in the Meadows, a district along Altadena's west edge that in the 1950s and '60s became one of the first here to integrate. Virtually all of the Meadows survived the fire.
Also living west of Lake Avenue (then the unofficial dividing line between white Altadena and Black Altadena) was John Outterbridge, the noted assemblage artist and longtime director of the Watts Towers Arts Center. His home on Fair Oaks Avenue was destroyed, along with much of his archive and family memorabilia, according to his daughter, Tami. The famed enamel artist Curtis Tann lived within walking distance, while the prolific sculptor Nathaniel Bustion, known as Sonny, lived near White in the Meadows. Betye Saar, 98, known for repurposing everyday objects into mystical collages, grew up in a home on northwest Pasadena's Pepper Street, just blocks from Altadena's west side.
Sidney Poitier, a good friend of White's from New York (White designed the poster art for Poitier's film 'The Defiant Ones') and the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, rented a home in west Altadena before moving to Beverly Hills. Ivan Dixon, the actor and trailblazing director (White once played his stunt double), lived on Marengo Avenue, and the science fiction writer Octavia Butler on Morada Place.
Later generations of Black artists continued to thrive here, including Mark Steven Greenfield, Yvonne Cole Meo, Senga Nengudi and Michael Chukes, and dozens of others holding down day jobs and creating whenever they could in this secret Eden.
Charles White, already an established figure when he moved from New York in 1959 for health reasons — he had respiratory problems and was advised to live in a milder climate — would become the glue holding this arts community together. His home and studio, still standing, was a gathering place, with many artists competing for the honor of driving White to or from one place or another. (He didn't drive.)
Ian still refers to Saar, Outterbridge, Dixon, Poitier and Charles's good friend Harry Belafonte as his 'fictive aunts and uncles.' He recalled how his father set up the sculptor Richmond Barthé, a cornerstone of the Harlem Renaissance, with an apartment, and how his mother, a social worker named Frances Barrett, was his caregiver until the end (she was white and their marriage was further evidence of west Altadena's status as a relative racial haven).
'For White, it was about creating community and connections,' said Lauren Cross, the associate curator of American decorative arts at the Huntington art museum in Pasadena, where the exhibition 'Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight' is on view through most of 2027. 'He operated on a paradigm that 'I've been given this opportunity, so I'm going to plug in artists I know who need it.''
White's circle worked as a kind of family, lifting its members up. And White nurtured an equally significant cohort while teaching at Otis College of Art, helping spawn some of the art world's greatest young talents, like Kerry James Marshall, David Hammons and Judithe Hernández. Many applied to Otis just to work with 'Charlie,' as he was affectionately known.
Saar, whom White would eventually recruit to teach at Otis, grew up in Altadena in the 1930s and '40s. Her neighborhood's paperboy, she told me, was Jackie Robinson, who lived down the street. Her local landmarks included the five-and-dime store, where she bought trinkets and art supplies. Though she would eventually settle in Laurel Canyon after studying art at Pasadena Junior College and U.C.LA., she has maintained tight family and professional relationships to both Altadena and northwest Pasadena throughout her life.
In the 1950s Saar (whose maiden name was Brown) started a jewelry business, cleverly named Brown and Tann, with Curtis Tann. Saar's sister, the teacher and civic leader Jeffalyn Johnson, settled in a home on Lincoln Avenue, where she and her husband, Alvin, hosted art shows in their backyard. Visitors would dress in their Sunday best. Other venues for art display, Saar said, were churches, afternoon tea parties and artist-run studios. Often there would be musical performances or book readings.
'It was very Altadena — laid-back, informal and filled with makers supporting each other,' said Moore, adding that artists here often stayed under the radar, without recognition by distant galleries, museums and critics. When Saar and others broke through , they were often identified as part of the larger Los Angeles scene.
And then came the fires. Hundreds of artists have lost their homes and studios, and it's unclear how many will be able, or willing, to return.
'I just don't want to go through this again,' said La Monte Westmoreland, 83, a longtime Altadena collage artist who lost one home in the 1993 Kinneloa fire. He rebuilt, only to lose his patio, koi pond and metal and ceramic sculptures in this one. 'I don't want to think about the next fire.'
The artist Kenturah Davis lost her home on Wistaria Place, as did her parents, both artists, less than a mile away. Davis worries about those without the means, or time, to rebuild, or the pressure to sell, from predatory forces already circling. But she is resolute. 'I am going to build,' she said. 'My parents feel the same way. It's just a matter of how.'
A substantial Black arts legacy has been badly damaged by the fires. The residences of many important artists have been lost, including those of the jazz saxophonist Benny Maupin, 84, and the jazz trumpeter Bobby Bradford, 90, whose collections of musical instruments were also destroyed. Critical public places where many of the city's artists gathered, like the Altadena Baptist Church, the Little Red Hen — a Black-owned restaurant since 1972 — and Altadena Hardware, are gone.
Ian White also pointed out that hundreds of Black artworks that used to grace the walls of lost houses were destroyed, too. 'You walked into homes and they were cultural identifiers that spoke,' he said.
Kellie Jones, a professor at Columbia University and the author of 'South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s,' said that art was often a kind of currency in the close community. 'People would trade their art for a trip to the doctor's office,' she said. Then there were the everyday works of creativity lost: mosaic steps, artworks hanging from trees, colorful gardens — 'all these quirky things happening,' White said.
This staggering loss of heritage has served as a grim reminder to the community to protect and cherish what's left. 'We're grappling with what this place has been, what it is now, and what it wants to be,' Kenturah Davis said.
Few of Altadena's surviving Black heritage sites have been recognized officially, though that may change. Some people are lobbying to formally mark them in the public's mind to protect them from future development.
Charles White Park, a grassy expanse at Lincoln and Fair Oaks, is the rare public park in the United States named for a Black artist. The park survived, but it's now surrounded by a sea of ruined houses. Ian White has been commissioned by the county to create new art pieces for the park, with details still being finalized, he said. Other local landmarks include Barthé Drive, a tiny street in northwest Pasadena that memorializes Richmond Barthé; and the gravesite of the abolitionist Owen Brown, son of John Brown, which Ian White rediscovered in 2012 up a winding trail in the Angeles National Forest, not far from his own house.
In 2020 Los Angeles County conducted the Altadena African American Historic Resources Survey, which suggested that a handful of Black sites be designated as county landmarks. But none of the surviving sites — not the Meadows or a Black section of southwest Altadena that practiced self-policing in the 1970s to minimize local crime and abuse from local law enforcement — have been designated.
'It's literally because of resource constraints,' said Amy Bodek, director of Los Angeles County Planning. 'We have been trying to landmark as many things as we can. But we have a very small preservation staff.' Bodek said she hopes the county will move to designate these areas, and revisit the survey to find more landmarks, which could include artists' homes or informal markers like Victor Ving and Lisa Beggs's 2022 'Welcome to Altadena' mural, which contains images of Charles White and Octavia Butler, and survived the fire.
Steven Lewis is one of the leaders of the Altadena Rebuild Coalition, part of a group discussing rebuilding. 'If these places weren't iconic,' he noted, 'they can be now, as places where people gather. To remember with each other everything that used to be around them.' The coalition is collecting oral histories from Altadenans.
Some artists are finding creative release in commemorating the tragedy. Davis's father, a painter known as Keni Arts, has created 'Beauty From Ashes,' a series of plein-air watercolors documenting the ruins of neighborhood mainstays like Rhythms of the Village gift shop and Jim's Burgers. He hopes they'll be displayed at a local site, to recapture historical memory.
The architect Matthew Milton lost his home and his parents' home. They were examples of Jane's Cottages, among a few hundred storybook residences with swooping rooflines and concave ceilings created by the builder Elisha P. Jane in the early 20th century. They became popular with the Black community; a party to celebrate the homes' 100th birthday was set for Jan. 8, the day the Eaton fire did most of its damage. Milton is already drafting plans for a new compound that he said will draw on local history and create something modern and durable.
Saar moved away from Altadena and eventually ended up in Laurel Canyon, after a devastating 1959 fire that destroyed much of the block where she chose to live. She takes a long view, remembering exploring the foundations of burned houses, finding bottles, pieces of metal and other elements for her art.
'That's how history is made,' she said. 'Something destroys something the way it is, and a new thing is built up.'
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