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Overview • Historic Districts • Homeowner Resources |
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CONSERVANCY PARTNER: CA-MODERN
Partnership Update Modern real estate still stands strong
The real estate meltdown may spell the end of the great twenty-first century housing bubble. But does it spell the end as well for high times for high modern? Don’t bet on it. Modern has become firmly established in the marketplace as a style that people appreciate, says James Ebert, a Los Angeles appraiser who has worked with many buyers and sellers of well-known modern homes. Throughout California, in many markets, including Orange County, Los Angeles, San Mateo, and Palo Alto, both tract and custom-designed mid-century modern homes are selling more quickly, and often for more than their comparable, non-architecturally distinctive rivals, precisely because they are out of the ordinary. For more, check out the CA-Modern report ‘ Too alluring to fail.’ Leland Lee’s fire-ravaged photo archive
Throughout his forty years as an architectural photographer, Leland Lee had one goal in mind—to capture the soul of every building he shot. Lee photographed work by some of Southern California’s foremost modern architects and designers, including residences by John Lautner, Pierre Koenig, A. Quincy Jones, Edward Fickett, and John Rex. In the 1980s a ferocious rainstorm destroyed much of the archive of negatives, prints, and transparencies stored in his Hollywood Hills home. In 2002, completing the job, a fire that began in his car destroyed the rest. “It represents a legacy of what I did during my existence,” he says. But rather than despair, Lee, now ninety-one, set off on a quest to recreate his lost archive. Can you help? Start by reading Lee’s story, ‘Soul searching.’
If you want to get inside the entire new issue of CA-Modern right now, here’s the online flip-book edition, created using an innovative digital magazine format. With your Flash-enabled web browser, you can view an animated version of the new CA-Modern as it appears in print, on Eichler Network Online. You can also buy past and future issues at the flip-book link.
More From CA-Modern
Don’t miss ‘Saving the ’60s,’ a new story tied to the Conservancy’s mid-century architecture preservation program, in the fall ’09 issue of L.A. Conservancy partner CA-Modern Magazine (published by the Eichler Network). The feature explores why 2010 is such an important preservation milestone, and why preserving buildings from the ’60s is rife with challenges and opportunities. Even though the burden of the ‘50-year hurdle’ lessens with each passing year, preservationists still face new technical and philosophical issues. Learn more—read ‘Saving the ’60s’ here. Encino Village ’s quirky ‘Modest Modern’
What can you say about the San Fernando Valley enclave of Encino Village, where low-gabled modern ranches sit alongside ‘Colonials’ that come with weathervanes? It set neighbors to wondering. It also spurred them on to uncover the history of the charming postwar development of 400-plus homes and ultimately to take greater care of the neighborhood’s very unique architectural heritage. That movement recently led CA-Modern Magazine to single out Encino Village—the setting, incidentally, for the greatest feel-so-good-you-weep Christmas film ever, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’—as their newest ‘Neighborhood on the Rise.’ Inside Frank Sinatra’s legendary desert digs
Frank Sinatra—‘the Voice,’ the 1950s’ greatest crooner, perhaps the greatest ever—was made for Palm Springs, a town that’s all about relaxing with style. Or was Palm Springs made for Frank? Twin Palms, Frank Sinatra’s first house in the desert, became a Palm Springs landmark as soon as it was completed, in 1947. It is also an architecturally important house as the first home designed by E. Stewart Williams, who would go on to become one of Palm Springs’ most important architects. It is well preserved today. Here’s the inside scoop on ‘One Voice, Twin Palms.’ Free E-Newsletter
‘High life’ of L.A.’s Crestwood Hills
Few modern neighborhoods have gotten underway with grander plans than Brentwood’s Crestwood Hills, which sits in the Santa Monica Mountains high above Sunset Boulevard. Imagine a place where hardworking musicians, teachers, and writers can live together, close to the city yet surrounded by nature, with cooperatively owned schools, stores, medical services—and even a bus to take them to their jobs in Los Angeles. Such was the dream. And some of it came true. But few modern neighborhoods have had as many ups and downs as Crestwood Hills. At the center of it all was its cooperative housing ideals—and its modern architecture. Eventually 17 of the homes, created in the late 1940s by the Mutual Housing Association and a design team headed by architect A. Quincy Jones, were designated as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. CA-Modern surveyed the past and the present of this ‘hillside modern’ development, and now offers Conservancy members and supporters an exclusive in-depth look at Crestwood Hills via ‘Loving the High Life.’
The partnership includes editorial coverage of Conservancy initiatives of interest to CA-Modern readers. The Winter 2009 issue includes an article on the Conservancy's Student Advocates Program, in which high school students helped to survey the Balboa Highlands Eichler tract in Granada Hills for potential designation as a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (historic district). Conservancy members and other supporters also have quick access to a wealth of information published in CA-Modern and on its website, as well as a new source of information (in addition to the Conservancy’s own Preservation Resource Directory) about service providers who specialize in maintaining modern homes. All CA-Modern issues past and present are also available online, including a “flip book” of the latest issues.
Published quarterly by the Eichler Network, which has operated from its San Francisco base for sixteen years, CA-Modern is a magazine with a mission. As part of the Eichler Network’s expansion plan in Southern California, CA-Modern’s goal is to increase awareness and appreciation for California’s modern architecture, particularly mid-century modern homes, and to provide owners with the means to preserve them. CA-Modern is published in hard-copy form in regional editions, serving Northern California, Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Palm Springs, and the Sacramento Valley. It currently reaches the households of 30,000 mid-century modern homeowners, representing 60,000 adults statewide with more than 25,000 in Southern California alone. A Lively Dose of Midcentury Heritage
With its strong focus on preservation, CA-Modern is a longtime advocate for the sensitive maintenance of the mid-century modern residences that are part and parcel of our history in Los Angeles and Southern California. The magazine is filled with lively and in-depth feature stories about modern architects and neighborhoods of mid-century homes. One continuing feature, ‘Neighborhood on the Rise,’ has brought attention to California’s mid-century modern neighborhoods that are rediscovering their heritage. Features also focus on the mid-century lifestyle, delving into modern sculpture, painting, and furnishings, and retro music (from Cool Jazz to Bossa Nova), all things Tiki, and Beat poetry. CA-Modern contributors include well-known architectural writers, landscape designers, and architects. Colorful original photography mixes with classic photography from the past and with reproductions of brochures, booklets, and more, for a lively visual experience. The publication also focuses on the practical, with articles on home maintenance, remodeling, furnishing, and landscaping, including features by professionals in modern home maintenance, design, and repair. On a lighter note, columnist Cherry Capri offers amusing advice on etiquette, love, and throwing theme parties. A New Source of Service Providers
CA-Modern also includes an expanding team of Southern California service and product providers—contractors in many fields, including roofers, window installers, architects, real estate services, and more—who specialize in maintaining modern homes. These service providers offer expertise much like those in the Conservancy’s own Preservation Resource Directory. CA-Modern’s preferred service providers are limited to “companies that have an emotional attachment to these homes, that have an understanding of them, and that really know how to work on them,” says CA-Modern publisher Marty Arbunich. To join the team, service companies must have a record of quality workmanship and customer service and approval of the State Contractors License Board and Better Business Bureau. More about CA-Modern Preferred Service Companies. “On one hand, CA-Modern provides a source of entertainment and information to homeowners,” Arbunich said, “and on the other, an effective support system for them as they try to preserve and improve their homes and neighborhoods. It’s a content mix that’s getting great reception from our readers.” CA-Modern ’s Vast Archive of Features Here are a few of the articles from the pages of CA-Modern now available on the Eichler Network Online: Feature Stories
Home Improvement
The Eichler Network’s online forum, Chatterbox Lounge, is where folks who love their mid-century modern homes discuss maintenance, resources, historical tidbits, and much more. Jump in—the water is fine!
Are you a service provider or vendor who understands and loves mid-century modern homes? Read about the types of featured service companies, the package of available benefits, and what it takes to join. For questions, contact the Eichler Network and CA-Modern magazine representative at info@eichlernetwork.com or 415-307-3801.
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Angelino Heights One of L.A.'s first suburbs, the hilltop residential area of Angelino Heights lies two miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, near the communities of Echo Park and Silver Lake. The area was planned as a respectable, genteel Victorian suburb for Los Angeles' late 19th-century upper-middle class. The first designated HPOZ in the city, Angelino Heights contains some of the best remaining examples of Victorian architecture in Los Angeles, as well as later examples of the Craftsman and Mission Revival styles. The 1300 block of Carroll Avenue is listed as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places and contains the highest concentration of 19th-century Victorian homes in all of Los Angeles. |
