|
Developer Bulldozes 52nd Place History |
|
|
The City
By Betty Pleasant (Full story published first in the WAVE Newspapers)
Efforts by the city to preserve the historic houses on East 52nd Place came too late for one of them, as the first of the highly cherished California Craftsman style masterpieces that line the street was demolished Tuesday.
East 52nd Place, between Avalon Boulevard and McKinley Avenue, is known as the Gilbert Lindsay Block, as it contains the home in which Lindsay — Los Angeles’ first Black city councilman — lived ever since his family migrated from Mississippi after World War II, until his death at age 90 in 1990.
The Lindsay house was designated California Historic Cultural Monument No. 726 in 2003, and became the impetus that drove Councilwoman Jan Perry to seek permanent protection for the homes adjacent to the Lindsay House, all of which were constructed by the Tifal Brothers almost 100 years ago.
The 600 block of East 52nd Place is officially recorded as the Tifal Brothers Tract for three German immigrant brothers — Charles, Gustav and William — who designed and built more than 350 bungalows in Los Angeles, including those built on East 52nd Place in 1911.
In mid-July, the council passed Perry’s motion to create an historic preservation overlay zone to permanently protect the tract, and to enact an interim control ordinance to “prevent construction, demolition and any permitting” in the tract until the overlay zone is created.
The motion was passed by the council and heard by the Planning and Land Use Committee on Aug. 5. The city attorney began drafting the interim control ordinance, which included an urgency clause so that as soon as the draft was completed, it would be passed on to the mayor and become effective immediately upon his signature.
But that wasn’t fast enough.
East 52nd Place residents woke up Monday morning to the sounds of a bulldozer revving up to demolish one of the block’s vacant but pristine craftsman houses. The alarmed neighbors ran to the house’s rescue and alerted the city and the media as to the outrage about to occur.
A city official went to the scene of the pending crime and determined that Seacliff Properties, owner of the house, did not have a demolition permit and, therefore, could not tear the house down.
However, Seacliff, headed by Chris Newcomb of Huntington Beach, went downtown and obtained a demolition permit two hours later. The bulldozer crew, with permit in hand, returned to East 52nd Place Tuesday morning and tore the house down. Perry and other city officials could not stop it because the means by which they could stop it had yet been put in place. The drafting of the interim control ordinance had not been completed.
The neighbors are alternately angry and sanguine about the turn of events. “We are happy we were able to delay the process, even if it was only for a day,” said Janae Oliver, whose great-grandmother purchased her family’s Tifal house in 1925. “Now [Seacliff Properties] know that they just can’t just come down here and do what they want because this is a low-income neighborhood and the perception is that nobody cares over here.
“While we are in a poor neighborhood which may be considered a ghetto, we recognize the value and significance of these cultural structures,” Oliver added. “So we are now moving ahead and looking forward to obtaining the [interim control ordinance] and ultimately the [overlay zone] to protect the remaining houses,” Oliver said.
(Read the rest of this column here. Betty Pleasant is WAVE Newspapers contributing editor. Photo by Gary McCarthy. More WAVE Newspapers news and views at www.wavenewspapers.com) ◘
CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 68
Pub: Aug 22, 2008
|
