Culture Buffs Want to Give Mall Planner the Brushoff

Members of the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission jostled with motorists having their Cadillacs and BMWs cleaned Wednesday as Studio City residents tried to explain why a popular neighborhood carwash ought to be designated an official Los Angeles “cultural monument.”

Besides being a fitting tribute to the city’s famed car culture, the 1950s-style carwash at Laurel Canyon and Ventura boulevards is the “gateway” to the San Fernando Valley, city officials were told.

Studio City residents have applied for cultural landmark status for the carwash and an adjoining 60-year-old gas station as a way of scrubbing a developer’s plan to build a mini-mall on the corner.

Homeowners contend that the carwash is the valley’s oldest and the only one in Los Angeles built around three 55-foot-tall boomerang-shaped steel beams. Developer Ira Smedra has told residents that he intends to demolish the automotive center this summer and replace it with a $15-million shopping center.

“The car has been a great part of our culture in the valley,” preservation campaign organizer Jack McGrath shouted to commissioners Wednesday afternoon over the roar of the carwash’s rinse jets.

“A gas station and carwash is an integral part of the development of Southern California as the freeway system. We hope you look at this as the gateway to Studio City.”

Actors and Others

Unocal service station dealer Pat Galati, who has operated the gas station and carwash since 1954, showed commissioners a 1,086-signature petition and 3,000 cards signed by carwash supporters. On top of the pile were cards from actors Ralph Bellamy, Gavin Macleod, Roddy McDowell and Telly Savalas.

He said gasoline has been continuously pumped at the corner since 1929. Motorists have been having their cars washed there since 1939.

“One of my customers said that taking a carwash and service station away from a Southern Californian is like taking a tub and shower away from the average American,” Galati told commission President Amarjit S. Marwah.

Polly Ward, Studio City Residents Assn. president, said residents are not opposed to development, “but we want to keep the ambience . . . the sleepy, small-town atmosphere.”

The commission’s inspection was interrupted when a group of fourth-graders from nearby Carpenter Avenue Elementary School marched past cars being buff-dried by Galati’s workers. They shouted out their own endorsement of the carwash over the noise.

Just Another Mall

“Why do people want to put so many mini-malls next to each other?” 10-year-old Jody Wilson demanded of the cultural heritage board commissioners.

Marwah explained that Smedra will be prohibited from tearing down the carwash for a year if his panel approves the cultural designation when it meets in two weeks and the Los Angeles City Council later ratifies the action. He said Smedra will be given time at the meeting to oppose the cultural designation.

Smedra did not attend Wednesday’s carwash meeting. But a spokesman, Ira Handelman, said afterward that Smedra has hired a pair of historical experts to research the carwash issue.

“We’re not stopping the project,” Handelman said. “What may turn out is that a small part of the site, a sign or a gas pump, is historic. That’s something we can evaluate.”

Marwah said the commission will evaluate the carwash using the same criteria it uses when it considers preservation of Victorian-era mansions and other landmarks in the city. He said those guidelines include a nominated structure’s architecture, its cultural and historic impact on the community and its age.

Considering Criteria

He said the three-legged boomerang may meet that first criteria. The carwash’s strong local support may meet the second.

“Hopefully, in two weeks the commission can decide favorably, in the best interest of the community, to keep our culture and our heritage in place,” Marwah said.

The commission’s two other members weren’t certain that the carwash’s nomination would not go down the drain, however.

“As an architectural monument, I’m not that favorably impressed,” said Takashi Shida, an architect and the panel’s vice president. “As an architectural monument, I’ll have to consider it a little further. A cultural monument? The fact it’s one of the earliest carwashes in the community is something, but I don’t want to prejudge.”

Why Not the Naylor’s?

Member Helen Madrid-Worthen said she feels the cultural monument application might carry more weight if it included the next-door Tiny Naylor’s restaurant, which mirrors the 1950s look of the carwash and gas station. The restaurant is at the edge of the Unocal lot but not included in the homeowners’ application.

The idea of declaring the carwash a cultural monument was amusing to some customers caught in the confusion of the commissioners’ tour.

“When I think of culture I think of literature and plays and plazas,” said Hollywood resident Helen Gale, who has come to the carwash for 14 years. “But in Studio City, yes, I think maybe it is a cultural landmark.”

Equally surprised was Fred Fiedler, a Glendale design engineer who oversaw the design and construction of the carwash in 1961. Fiedler said he has done about 3,000 gas stations and carwashes over the last 43 years. Galati’s gas station in Studio City was a standard Union Oil Co. “300-series” model.

Fiedler said an anonymous employee of a steel company that supplied the beams for Galati’s facility had the idea to build the carwash around the 55-foot boomerangs.

“I thought it looked kind of garish,” Fiedler recalled Wednesday. “We thought they overdid themselves with the steel. But the idea was to attract attention.”

But an official designation would be dandy, Fiedler admitted.

“This will be my first landmark,” he said.