A Window on the Spirit of Christmas
The holiday spirit is again aglow along select shopping streets, through scattered malls and in store windows across the city, attracting, to the delight of merchants, seasonal strollers and putting to rest, at least for a while, the cliche that no one walks in Los Angeles.
Prompting more than the usual number of persons to linger downtown after work, or to tour on weekends, are some spectacularly decorated trees and lighting displays. Two of the more impressive trees and displays can be seen in the Seventh Market Place at Figueroa and 7th streets and on the central pavilion of the Music Center.
From a planning point of view, it is interesting how the crowds the displays attract tend to overcome the problems of parking and access downtown. And from a design point of view, it is marvelous how the displays when lit at night overcome the sterility of the surrounding structures and lend a welcome verve to the skyline. Imaginative lighting can enliven architecture.
More modest seasonal displays, ranging from banners to bunting, brighten most of the region’s shopping districts. These include stretches of Larchmont and Hollywood boulevards in Hollywood, Brand Boulevard in Glendale, Ventura and Van Nuys boulevards in the San Fernando Valley and Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, just to mention a few.
In Santa Monica, along Montana Avenue, off of which I live, the red banners decorated with white snowflakes draped from the street lights are a bit faded. But quite enticing are a smattering of dressed windows. Catching my eye was the display of antique toys at Erickson Realty, at 1030, and the calculated clutter of frills and frippery in the surfeit of stores specializing in Southwestern and country style fashions.
The avenue’s conviviality was helped considerably when I was there last weekend by a reggae dance band called the Inner Secrets, playing at the northwest corner of 14th Street to advertise Club Patois, where they perform on Monday nights. While the band did not play holiday tunes, they certainly generated a holiday spirit.
For the premier festive-season scene, once again it is Beverly Hills and its annual diverting street decorations and dazzling window displays. The decorations include some 40 murals spanning Wilshire Boulevard that etch in white tracer lights traditional Currier & Ives holiday portraits, and about 450 oversize holiday cards hung from lamp posts.
But it is the many dressed windows that sparkle most, and prompted me last week to serve, as I have in the past, as one of nearly two dozen jurors in the annual window display contest sponsored by the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau. Not surprisingly there were no fewer than 25 winners.
Nearly everyone had a favorite. Among mine were Jef’s florist shop at 8632 Wilshire Blvd., Wilshire Fireplace across the street at 8636, and the Teuscher and Aphrodite sweet shops at 9548 Brighton Way, and 375 N. Beverly Drive, respectively. All were winners.
Another favorite and a winner was the bevy of animated bears cavorting in the window of Mrs. Gooch’s at 239 N. Crescent Drive. In addition to the display, I found the recently completed building there--designed by the former architecture firm of Kamnitzer & Cotton--a rare successful combination of the traditional, social and aesthetic concerns of architecture
The well-scaled, modestly detailed, rose brick structure includes, in addition to Mrs. Gooch’s, an 877-space parking garage topped by 151 units of affordable housing. Designed for senior citizens and the handicapped, the housing is sited on a raised plaza that serves as the roof of the garage. All this was built with imagination on what had been a raw municipal parking lot, thanks to the efforts of the city, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Jewish federation.
Deserving a glimpse also for its architecture is the also recently completed collection of boutiques at One Rodeo Drive, at the northwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard. The building marked by appropriately subdued neoclassical detailing and a dome of Venetian glass tile anchors the highly visible corner exceptionally well, relating nicely to the street and to its varied neighbors.
The complex designed by architect Johannes Van Tilburg and associates with a touch of class makes an attractive gateway to seasonally stylish Rodeo Drive, and offers yet another reason to window shop there.