9 August 2018 - LOST VICTORIAN MANSIONS OF DOWNTOWN LA

LOST VICTORIAN MANSIONS

 OF DOWNTOWN LA

G'day folks,

Downtown LA does have history, it’s just buried under gleaming high-rise office blocks and strip malls. 

Despite once attracting high-income residents with its fashionable apartment buildings, 'Bunker Hill' had become a working class lodging district by the 1920s. The once thriving leafy hilltop suburb was a symbol of urban decay that discouraged new investments. After the Great Depression, the grand old Victorian mansions were run-down and being used as cheap apartment hotels.

In the 1950s, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency came up with a drastic redevelopment plan for the entire Bunker Hill area and by 1968, every last Victorian home of Bunker Hill Avenue had been demolished.

These pictures show the last surviving houses, the Castle and another Victorian home, the Salt Box, being relocated by preservationists to another site in the 1960s, only to end up getting torched by vandals soon after.

The controversial redevelopment destroyed and displaced a community of almost 22,000 working-class families who  were renting rooms in the architecturally significant but ill-maintained buildings. 

In 1966, The Los Angeles Times wrote of Bunker Hill: “Nowhere else in Los Angeles was the architecture so ornate. The mansions were wooden-frame Victorian with Gothic gingerbread touches applied with a heavy hand to simulate masonry.”

Clancy's comment: Magnificent. Imagine what stories these enchanting homes could tell? Imagine who lived in them?

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12 October 2017 - A BURIED FERRARI

A BURIED FERRARI

G'day folks,

Ever found a Ferari in your front garden?

In February, 1978, a Dino 246 GTS was discovered by a group of kids digging in the front yard of their home in Los Angeles. After much speculation and media attention with very few leads, it was eventually concluded that the car, which had been declared stolen four years prior by its owners, had been buried there by the thieves. The-then current residents claimed no part in it and amazingly, no neighbours had reported seeing anything strange (like someone burying a Ferrari) back in 1974. 

The car was returned to the insurance company that had covered the owners’ loss several years earlier and it was put up for private auction. The Dino went to a young mechanic for $9,000 who managed to fully restored it despite extensive damage (from being buried underground for several years and from the botched removal job from its muddy grave). Since then, historical enthusiasts have been unable to track down the mechanic as he has since moved garage and never left a forwarding address. Three decades after it was unearthed, the Ferrari has yet to be listed on any Dino registry. Is it still on the road? Could the disappearing mechanic have been the one that buried it in the first place? So much mystery still revolves around the buried Dino.

Clancy's comment: What next will we find buried?

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