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Travel + Leisure
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Travel + Leisure
This Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Building Could Soon Lose Its UNESCO World Heritage Site Status—Here's Why
Hollyhock House, located in East Hollywood, is one of Los Angeles's most iconic landmarks and is the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in the city—however, this architectural gem may soon lose its UNESCO status and close to the public. Facing a major budget shortfall, L.A.'s City Council is weighing municipal cuts and staffing reductions proposed by Mayor Karen Bass, some of which affect the Department of Cultural Affairs, which manages Hollyhock House. The landmark currently has two full-time employees, and under the potential plan, it would be left with just one staff member. Additionally, two other positions, which are currently vacant, would also be eliminated, making it impossible to support public tours and ongoing preservation efforts. The house officially earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2019. It's one of just 26 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United States and the only man-made one on the West Coast. However, guidelines require the house to have at least four full-time staffers in order to maintain its UNESCO status. Additionally, the cuts will affect the city's ability to preserve and maintain one of arguably the most unique buildings in L.A. 'Hollyhock House was the first Los Angeles commission for the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright,' says Andrew Salimian, director of advocacy at the Los Angeles Conservancy, a historic preservation organization. '... Hollyhock House is an extraordinary and early expression of Southern California Architecture." This massive, 17-room residence was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for American oil heiress and socialite Aline Barnsdall, who intended it to be a part of a massive, 36-acre art and theater complex. However, the project was never fully completed, and Barnsdall found the home too impractical to live in. So, in 1927, the house was donated to the City of Los Angeles, and it became a public museum in 1976. Heavily inspired by pre-Columbian Central American architecture, Hollyhock is considered to be one of Wright's most experimental works and is best known for the hollyhock motifs (Barnsdall's favorite flower) that visitors can spot around the property. As of now, the site is open to visitors Thursday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. In recent years, the city has invested heavily in renovating Hollyhock House. During the pandemic, it closed for two years, and during that time, its massive fireplace, art-glass balcony doors, the guesthouse, and original Wright-designed furnishings were restored. The proposed cuts have been a shock to both preservationists and architecture fans. 'The city worked for over 15 years to get UNESCO status for Hollyhock House, and now these cuts will adversely affect the preservation, protection, and public access to this site,' says Salimian.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
L.A.'s Terminal Island buildings listed among America's 11 most endangered historic places
The only two surviving buildings from Terminal Island's days as a thriving Japanese American fishing village in the early 1900s have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2025 list of America's 11 most endangered historic places. The designation, announced Wednesday morning, is meant to elevate the visibility of the site, which stands as a physical reminder of a story that ended with the incarceration of the island's residents — among an estimated 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most American citizens, who were forcibly removed following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II. Today, Terminal Island is part of one the country's busiest container ports, and many people don't know that it was the first place from which Japanese Americans were uprooted and sent to government camps such as Manzanar in the Owens Valley. "It's a story that hasn't been really told," said Los Angeles Conservancy President and Chief Executive Adrian Scott Fine, adding that his organization has been working to preserve Terminal Island's structures for close to two decades. "And if you go there, you're not going to know that unless you stumble across these two buildings and then learn the story, because everything, with the exception of these two buildings, has been cleared away." The village was home to more than 3,000 people living in small wooden cottages and bungalows. Tuna Street was the main business thoroughfare and home to the two remaining buildings: the dry goods store Nanka Shoten (1918) and the grocery A. Nakamura Co. (1923). The destruction of the village began immediately following its residents' removal in 1942, and over the years more structures were razed as the island grew into an industrial and commercial port. Historic sites on the annual National Trust list are chosen in part "based on the urgency of the threat, the viability of the proposed solution and the community engagement around the site," said National Trust President and Chief Executive Carol Quillen. A group of survivors and descendants of the Terminal Island community — the Terminal Islanders Assn., formed in the 1970s — has been crucial to preservation efforts and has partnered with the National Trust and the L.A. Conservancy to propose meaningful and practical preservation solutions. Fine said discussions have included turning the structures into stores selling food and other necessities to port workers, who have few options on the island. "They were always community-serving, and that would continue the original function and use even today," said Fine, while helping to tell the history. The Tuna Street buildings are being considered for a historic-cultural monument designation with the city of L.A., a lengthy process that does not totally protect any site from destruction. The Port of Los Angeles is reportedly considering demolishing the vacant and deteriorating buildings to make room for more container storage. Fine said the port has done a study that found the buildings to not be historic. But razing the buildings, he said, would contradict a master plan that the port hammered out with the L.A. Conservancy in 2013 after the entire island was placed on that year's National Trust list of endangered places. The report allows the port to conduct a streamlined environmental review leading to demolition, "which they've done for some of the other tuna canneries and structures that were there just in the last 10 years," Fine said. "So in pattern and in practice, we believe that that's very much how they're approaching this one as well." The National Trust's Quillen said the goal is to highlight "the contributions of these folks to our country's history and economy, and the ways in which this community fought for the rights that we all subscribe to. So when I think about the promise of this country, the ideals that are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I want to honor the people whose lives and work exemplified the fight to realize those ideals." The other 10 sites on the 2025 National Trust list are: Cedar Key, Fla. French Broad and Swannanoa River corridors in western North Carolina Hotel Casa Blanca, Idlewild, Mich. May Hicks Curtis House, Flagstaff, Ariz. Mystery Castle, Phoenix The Chateau at Oregon Caves, Caves Junction, Ore. Pamunkey Indian Reservation, King William County, Va. San Juan Hotel, San Juan, Texas The Turtle, Niagara Falls, N.Y. The Wellington, Pine Hill, N.Y. At noon Wednesday, the L.A. Conservancy will hold a virtual program about the history of Tuna Street and efforts to preserve it. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
07-05-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
L.A.'s Terminal Island buildings listed among America's 11 most endangered historic places
The only two surviving buildings from Terminal Island's days as a thriving Japanese American fishing village in the early 1900s have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2025 list of America's 11 most endangered historic places. The designation, announced Wednesday morning, is meant to elevate the visibility of the site, which stands as a physical reminder of a story that ended with the incarceration of the island's residents — among an estimated 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most American citizens, who were forcibly removed following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II. Today, Terminal Island is part of one the country's busiest container ports, and many people don't know that it was the first place from which Japanese Americans were uprooted and sent to government camps such as Manzanar in the Owens Valley. Buildings along Tuna Street on Terminal Island have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2025 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. 'It's a story that hasn't been really told,' said Los Angeles Conservancy President and Chief Executive Adrian Scott Fine, adding that his organization has been working to preserve Terminal Island's structures for close to two decades. 'And if you go there, you're not going to know that unless you stumble across these two buildings and then learn the story, because everything, with the exception of these two buildings, has been cleared away.' The village was home to more than 3,000 people living in small wooden cottages and bungalows. Tuna Street was the main business thoroughfare and home to the two remaining buildings: the dry goods store Nanka Shoten (1918) and the grocery A. Nakamura Co. (1923). The destruction of the village began immediately following its residents' removal in 1942, and over the years more structures were razed as the island grew into an industrial and commercial port. Buildings along Tuna Street on Terminal Island have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2025 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Historic sites on the annual National Trust list are chosen in part 'based on the urgency of the threat, the viability of the proposed solution and the community engagement around the site,' said National Trust President and Chief Executive Carol Quillen. A group of survivors and descendants of the Terminal Island community — the Terminal Islanders Assn., formed in the 1970s — has been crucial to preservation efforts and has partnered with the National Trust and the L.A. Conservancy to propose meaningful and practical preservation solutions. Fine said discussions have included turning the structures into stores selling food and other necessities to port workers, who have few options on the island. 'They were always community-serving, and that would continue the original function and use even today,' said Fine, while helping to tell the history. The Tuna Street buildings are being considered for a historic-cultural monument designation with the city of L.A., a lengthy process that does not totally protect any site from destruction. The Port of Los Angeles is reportedly considering demolishing the vacant and deteriorating buildings to make room for more container storage. Fine said the port has done a study that found the buildings to not be historic. But razing the buildings, he said, would contradict a master plan that the port hammered out with the L.A. Conservancy in 2013 after the entire island was placed on that year's National Trust list of endangered places. The report allows the port to conduct a streamlined environmental review leading to demolition, 'which they've done for some of the other tuna canneries and structures that were there just in the last 10 years,' Fine said. 'So in pattern and in practice, we believe that that's very much how they're approaching this one as well.' The National Trust's Quillen said the goal is to highlight 'the contributions of these folks to our country's history and economy, and the ways in which this community fought for the rights that we all subscribe to. So when I think about the promise of this country, the ideals that are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I want to honor the people whose lives and work exemplified the fight to realize those ideals.' A memorial to the Japanese American fishing village on Terminal Island. The other 10 sites on the 2025 National Trust list are: Cedar Key, Fla. French Broad and Swannanoa River corridors in western North Carolina Hotel Casa Blanca, Idlewild, Mich. May Hicks Curtis House, Flagstaff, Ariz. Mystery Castle, Phoenix The Chateau at Oregon Caves, Caves Junction, Ore. Pamunkey Indian Reservation, King William County, Va. San Juan Hotel, San Juan, Texas The Turtle, Niagara Falls, N.Y. The Wellington, Pine Hill, N.Y. At noon Wednesday, the L.A. Conservancy will hold a virtual program about the history of Tuna Street and efforts to preserve it.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A Legendary L.A. Restaurant is Coming Back - For One Night Only
If your classy grandma grew up in L.A., chances are she loved Bullocks Wilshire. The grande dame of Los Angeles retail was an art deco beacon on the boulevard from 1929 until 1993. Now, you can see what all the fuss was about with "A Taste of Bullocks Wilshire," an evening of dining and history in the store's former Tea Room. Southwestern School of Law restored the luxury department store as a beautiful school campus and won the Los Angeles Conservancy preservation award in 1997. 'It was the greatest shopping experience in Los Angeles,' says Mary Alice Wollam, who wrote the Conservancy's tour of the landmark. 'You could go and have your hair done and go to the tanning salon. In the 1930s, Irene, the great designer for MGM, had a salon there where an everyday dress cost $400. It was absolutely elegant and inspirational to be surrounded by that kind of architecture. Their clientele had money but it was also diverse.' The grand salons, stunning fragrance hall, and famed tea room have served as study halls and a cafeteria for law students for three decades and are strictly off-limits to outsiders save for the rare occasions when the Parkinson and Parkinson-designed beauty is open for tours. An annual day in the restored 1929 interior of the tea room is a hot ticket, often selling out to members and alumni before being made available to the George Geary. The school is hosting a talk, book signing, and 'light repast' in that famed tea room on April 23 with the chef, TV host, food historian, and author of L.A.'s Legendary Restaurants and L.A.'s Landmark Restaurants. The books place the department store dining room in the company of Musso and Frank, Chasen's, and other long-gone L.A. favorites. Geary, who was the former pastry chef for the Walt Disney Company and judged 28 seasons of culinary contests for the Los Angeles County Fair, will be presenting the original Bullocks Wilshire Cantonese Chicken Salad served in little bamboo boats and drinks from the famed dining room including their famous cherry vanilla punch. The special menu also includes appetizers, an authentic Brown Derby Cobb salad, and the famed dessert 'Strawberries Romanoff' from Romanoff's in Beverly Hills. The school is also setting up a display of vintage tableware from the restaurant from their private collection. 'I lived around the corner in college,' Geary says. 'Bullocks was expensive, but you got treated differently. You felt rich when you went even if you weren't.' Geary's talk is being held in two original rooms: the Salle Moderne and Directoire salon, where Jean Harlow was famously photographed by George Hurrell in 1933. Guests will be escorted directly to the salons without touring the main building. Geary suggests admiring the architecture over the shoulder of the guards on your way to the elevator. Just try to look classy while you're doing it. A Taste of Bullocks Wilshire, April 23, 2025 at 7pm
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Their grandfather came to America and opened a nursery. A century later, it's closing
For the better part of a century, generations of the Nakai family have kept the shelves at Hawthorne Nursery stocked with seeds and fertilizers, the lot outside full of fruit trees, potted plants and succulents. The job, for the past many years, has fallen to Kei Nakai, 70, and his brother, David. But they will be the last. When the brothers retire at the end of the month, the 97-year-old nursery and, with it almost a century of family and local history, will go too. "It's time," Nakai said. The nursery dates to 1927, when it was started by Kei and David's grandfather, Minegusu Nakai, who had emigrated from Japan to Vancouver, Canada, in 1898 and moved to Hawthorne after marrying. Today, it is one of the few remaining plant nurseries in the Los Angeles area that were opened by Japanese Americans before the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941. Shortly after, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S., many of them citizens, were forced into incarceration camps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066. Taking what they could carry, they sold or left behind their homes, possessions and businesses. To avoid being imprisoned in a camp, the Nakai family fled to work on a sugar beet farm in Colorado, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. Another nursery owner in Gardena leased the property while they were gone and when they returned at the end of the war they purchased more land to expand the nursery into what it is today. Kei Nakai says he'll miss the most his parents' home — a skinny, green two-story building that adjoins the nursery on Grevillea Avenue. He pointed out his childhood bedroom window and said he wants to take a pane of glass and part of the old molding to make a commemorative frame before it's bulldozed when they sell. He said he hopes the land is turned into something nice. There is so much "old stuff" everywhere, he said, it's hard to decide what to keep and what to toss. Antique items are part of what's left on display across the nursery's walls: A scale that's been there since the nursery opened. The '50s retro blue sign outside. A letter board above the register that reads, "Beautifying Hawthorne for 97 years. Enjoy the outdoors. Go gardening." A weathered train car used for storage — older than the nursery itself, he thinks — might go too, Nakai said. He isn't sure where it came from or how old it is, though he remembers his father bringing it onto the property at some point. The conservancy expressed some interest it in, but he hasn't heard anything in a while. The closure isn't for a lack of business, Nakai said. He declined to share revenue information but said the business was doing well and there's been an additional boost since the closure — and sales to clear inventory — was announced. Early on a recent Monday morning, the nursery was quiet other than an occasional phone call answered by his brother, David, in a back room. It was a far cry from the days during the COVID-19 pandemic, when South Bay residents were stuck at home and came looking for plants to cultivate and distract. "This place was packed," Nakai said. "It was never empty." A man wheeled his baby boy into the store to ask when the doors will shut for good. "I love this place," he told Nakai. Kevin Baker, 45, frequented the shop when he first moved to the area from Pacific Palisades four years ago, drawn by the rare or interesting offerings not easily found at other nurseries, he said. He visited weekly, then monthly, then less frequently after his two children were born and his schedule got busier. "I'm glad I got to see it before it closed," he said. Nakai said he has been discussing retirement over the last 15 years and was just waiting for the right time. As a kid he worked for his parents in the shop and made 25 cents a day. When he graduated from UCLA in 1976 as an engineer, he said, government layoffs at the end of the Vietnam War meant he'd be jockeying for work right out of college. It made sense for him to take over the business instead. His own children, now in their 30s, are happy with their own careers and have no interest in taking over, he said. The Nakai family brings a century of knowledge and skill to its horticulture work, said Russell Akiyama, a third- generation owner of the nearby Sunflower Farms Nursery in Torrance. "They really did live, breathe and thrive in the plant world," he said. Nakai spent time studying the Dudleya genus, succulents native to the West Coast, and contributed to its taxonomy, or scientific classification. In a presentation recorded in 1992 at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, a younger Nakai flips through pictures and describes different species of Dudleya plants. And David Nakai "could make something grow out of a rock," Akiyama joked. He recalled once seeing David propagating a flourishing flat of white wisteria, which is particularly hard to grow, and wondered how he'd managed to do it. And the nursery's passion fruit, which Akiyama called "the best passion fruit you've ever tasted," will live on in Sunflower Farms' own collection, he said. As Hawthorne Nursery prepares to close, Akiyama said he takes solace in seeing the influence the Nakai family and other Japanese American nursery owners have had when he drives through neighborhoods in Torrance, Gardena and other cities nearby and sees trees cultivated by the nursery owners decades ago. "Our landscaping is just as much of a monument to who we are as our buildings," he said. "There is no full, total goodbye. It's just an, 'I'll see you later.'" Sign up for our Wide Shot newsletter to get the latest entertainment business news, analysis and insights. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
