Another L.A. classic bites the dust

Add those whitewashed guardrails to the list of L.A. landmarks fading from the scene. Polite as picket fences, they went up throughout the Hollywood Hills in the ‘20s and, like so much of the ephemera hereabouts, became permanent. The city no longer maintains them (though boosters in Laurel Canyon have been known to paint theirs themselves) and is gradually replacing the most decrepit with standard-issue steel beam guardrails.

As safety devices, wooden fences held together with corroding nails are, of course, ridiculous. The city’s Bureau of Engineering, in a hardly reassuring coinage, calls them “warning rails.” “They’re not designed for impact,” admits Luis Ganaja, a bureau project manager. “If you drive straight at one, you’re going over.”

Their aesthetic impact is harder to dismiss. The canyon guardrails are bright threads in the city’s fabric; take them away and L.A. looks a little duller. In an unwitting metaphor for their preservation, the city recently erected a shiny new guardrail on Mulholland Drive near Cahuenga Boulevard but neglected to remove the doughty whitewashed fence it was to replace, which now huddles, forgotten but protected, behind its usurper.