The Law and Landmarks
Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune architecture critic and The Skyline blogger, posted an
update on Chicago's legal battle to preserve the city's landmarks law. I just wanted to let people in the Windy City know that we had a similar battle here in LA a couple of years ago.
It was the same old song and dance about tramping on property rights and the illegal
nature of the city's Historic Preservation Overlay Zones. (LA's version of historic districts) It was quite a fight, and for a while it looked like the city could lose all of its 23 HPOZs, but after two court battles, a judge found that the city was within its rights to designate neighborhoods as historic preservation zones. It was touch and go, believe me.
I had the honor (it truly was an honor) to serve as a volunteer docent for the Los Angeles
Conservancy, and I gave a tour of the city's Broadway Historic Theatre District. Listed on the National Register, it is the largest historic theater district in the nation. I loved bringing people into the physical world of motion picture history, visiting the oldest theater on the street built in 1910, and standing in the lobbies and auditoriums of the magical picture palaces of the 1920s and 30s.
We wrapped up the tour inside the auditorium of the old Warner Bros./Pantages Theater,
which had been converted into a jewelry shopping mall. We would stand on what had been the stage area, but now just looked like the sales floor of a department store. I'd make sure that everyone looked up and around them, because although the seats and raked floor were gone, the Baroque plasterwork, ceiling mural, and iron balcony rails - with the WB logo woven into the design - were still intact. It was the same auditorium that appears in the opening scenes of Funny Girl, when Fanny Brice (Barbara Streisand) is sitting in a theater starting to reminisce about her life. People were thrilled. I always reminded them though, that no landmark is ever safe, not the 12 theaters we'd seen, nor the districts created to preserve them.
If certain developers, realtors and property rights advocates had had their way, that tour
down Broadway could never have happened, because I'm sure that most of those theaters would have been demolished years ago. LA has preserved 23 historic communities from becoming altered beyond recognition, because of the city's HPOZs. I just cannot understand the argument that preserving buildings is detrimental, or exclusionary, to property owners, the city, and its neighborhoods. I hope that the Chicago Planning Department, the City Council, and a wise judge will do for that city, what the Planning Commission, City Council and a judge, did for LA.
Pantages Theatre, lapl.org; Los Angeles Theatre lobby detail, jfer via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
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