Retirement Home for Leftists Closing Its Doors After 81 Years

Pauline Manpearl, 92, walked through her small, dim apartment on her last morning there.

“Where will I sleep tonight?” she said to no one in particular.

She gazed down at her old books and rubbed her thumb along the spine of one: “Karl Marx: His Life and Environment.” She announced that she wasn’t feeling well.

“It’s this move,” she said. “I’m all shook up because of it. I will really miss this place. But as long as there will be some familiar faces where I’m going, I think I’ll be fine.”

Manpearl is among the last of the residents at Sunset Hall, a Mid-City Los Angeles retirement home that since 1924 has housed seniors with a leftist political bent. A smiling woman with sparkling eyes, she has trouble remembering what she did five minutes ago. But she clearly remembers the communist protest march she took part in as a young woman.

On Friday morning, Manpearl stood by as movers packed up her bed, couch and books, and carted them away. On Friday afternoon, her 70-year-old son drove her to Bethany Towers, a six-story retirement home in Hollywood that will be her new home.

Soon she will be followed by three others from Sunset Hall. When they move, sometime next month, a little-known Los Angeles political landmark will close its doors.

“This is the end of an era, really,” said Manpearl’s son, Jerry Sullivan, as he stood in a hallway at Sunset Hall. “There are just not enough of the old activists still around.”

During its high point, in the 1960s and ‘70s, Sunset Hall’s 39 rooms were full, and there was a waiting list. The residents included blacklisted screenwriters, editors at communist newspapers and friends of socialist writer Upton Sinclair.

But those days are gone, and Sunset Hall has long struggled to stay open. It nearly closed in the ‘90s. Early this year, down to 11 frail residents, its debt reaching $300,000 and its prospects for a turnaround remote, the nonprofit residence again planned to close.

A story in The Times brought fresh attention to the home. For a spell, Sunset Hall’s board flirted with becoming partners with a developer who said he would inject new money and vigor, maybe enough to keep the place running. When the deal fell through in July, the board quietly worked out a deal with Bethany Towers.

The two retirement homes are markedly different.

Sunset Hall is two stories tall, with small rooms and a shopworn adobe exterior. It stands on a weary block and might be torn down.

Bethany Towers is a tall brick complex with large rooms, on the edge of Hollywood. A landmark neighborhood building, its penthouse suite, residents say, was once Jack Benny’s apartment.

Bethany Towers doesn’t share Sunset Hall’s political pedigree. Many of its roughly 100 residents couldn’t care less about politics.

“We may not be exactly alike, but we’re going to blend well together,” said Nancy Brown, Bethany Towers’ director. As part of the deal, she said, several Sunset Hall staffers will work for Bethany Towers. Some will provide nursing help that Bethany Towers hasn’t had.

Brown said Sunset Hall residents won’t see an increase in their rent, which has hovered at about $1,500 a month for room, nursing care and meals.

Even before Manpearl arrived, two other Sunset Hall residents had moved into Bethany Towers.

Luba Perlin, 91, perhaps Sunset Hall’s most charismatic longtime resident, was already making her presence known. She pirouetted in hallways, sang, whistled and told anyone who would listen about her past as a modern dancer and radical political activist in Echo Park.

“Here, my room is huge,” she said, as she sat in the lobby. “I could feel bad about moving, but I don’t have time to sit around and mope.”

Besides, Sunset Hall board members plan to keep looking for a new building and reopen.

“It’s not that Sunset Hall is going away,” said Wendy Caputo, Sunset Hall director. “The mission is alive.”

Manpearl sat nearby, complaining that nobody had told her about the move, when in fact it had been explained to her dozens of times, and she had even visited Bethany Towers.

“I’m trembling on the inside,” she said. “This place, where I am going to sleep tonight, it’s a good place, right?”