A Walk on the Finer Side

The abundance of sleek, upscale interior-design showrooms in West Hollywood demonstrates how trends go in cycles.

“Originally all the to-the-trade design showrooms were on these streets, but when the Pacific Design Center opened on Melrose in 1975, a lot of the merchants moved there and left this area almost empty,” says Richard Herb, president of Richard Charles LLC, an interior design firm that originally had an office at the design center.

Within the last six or seven years, however, there’s been a flowering of new high-end retail stores in the area, such as Armani Casa, as well as some to-the-trade showrooms. “Designer traffic slowed down at the PDC, so many [shop owners] decided to return,” says Herb, who moved to Beverly Boulevard more than three years ago.

In 1996, local business owners, through a city ordinance, established the area around Robertson and Beverly boulevards and Melrose Avenue as a Business Improvement District, calling it the Avenues of Art and Design.

To promote the area to a largely unaware public, these entrepreneurs began to hold annual neighborhood open houses featuring design information as well as food and entertainment.

The next event takes place Saturday, from 4:30 to 9 p.m. The fifth annual Art & Design Walk will encompass a half-mile-square area, now home to 100 antique and contemporary furniture and interior-design stores, more than 30 art galleries, 40 restaurants and a variety of other art or design-related businesses, including Heritage Books, the biggest antiquarian bookshop in the United States.

Visitors can begin their tour at any showroom in the Melrose-Beverly-Robertson area, and the boundaries will be marked by multicolored banners.

Because these tony establishments generally are patronized primarily by the design trade and affluent retail clients, the weekend’s open houses should prove an unintimidating opportunity for the uninitiated to chat with showroom owners and learn about the latest design trends.

“The showroom owners are interested in people who want to learn more about design, even if they can’t afford to buy a thing,” says Avenues spokesman Alex Stettinski.

And an evening’s visit can cover a lot of ground. “You have diverse showrooms, all in walking distance, with many of them family or privately owned, as is ours,” says Jamie Adler, president of Phyllis Morris furniture.

All the participating showrooms will hand out programs outlining special events, with addresses and times, and provide locations of the five hospitality areas offering free coffee, water and hors d’oeuvres.

Seven gift packages, valued from $5,000 to $7,000, will be raffled, with tickets selling for $5 each and proceeds benefiting P.S. Arts, a nonprofit group that provides arts education to schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Shuttle buses will also be available for the tour. Studio Poliform on Beverly offers high-end contemporary Italian furniture and accessories, as does Diva, at the corner of Beverly and Robertson, which will project highlights from the 2002 Salone Internazionale del Mobile on large screens and show the latest line from American furniture designer Jeffrey Bernett of B&B; Italia.

Richard Charles will have New York designer Susan Unger’s home collection done in couture fabrics, and Phyllis Morris, on Beverly, will show a new retro modern furniture line called Circa.

Unusual events include Japanese tea ceremonies at Sabi on Melrose, a Buddha blessing at Silk Roads, also on Melrose, and free restoration advice on furniture built from 1900 to 1950 at Anne Hauck Art Deco on Robertson.

Walker & Zanger on Melrose will show “Chairing Styles,” an exhibition of 11 chairs and matching gowns designed by the 2002 graduates of the downtown Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.

Special parking arrangements will make metered street parking in the area free after 4 p.m., and neighborhood restricted parking won’t be enforced.

Parking also is available in the lot at the Pacific Design Center, 8700 Melrose Ave., and in marked lots at 8899 Beverly Blvd. and 8500 Melrose Ave. For more information, call (310) 289-2534 or www.avenues artdesign.com.

In 1908, Sylvanus Marston (1883-1946) designed America’s first bungalow court, with 11 one-story Arts and Crafts homes set in a garden bisected by an automobile driveway.

Marston’s work in Pasadena will be the focus of bus tours, “From Modest to Masterpiece: The Sylvanus Marston Tour,” on Saturday at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

“The tour will emphasize the versatility of this man and his firm, Marston Van Pelt Maybury, who designed 1,000 structures from 1908 to the late 1930s,” says Kathleen Tuttle, author of “Sylvanus Marston, Pasadena’s Quintessential Architect.”

Marston’s career ranged from bungalows to French chateaux and Tudor-style mansions. He is credited as the first to use color on exterior stucco in Spanish residential design with his pink A.L. Garford house, built in 1916 in Pasadena.

“He was distinguished by his rapport with clients,” says Tuttle. “He didn’t do signature buildings; instead he gleaned from his clients their unexpressed wishes.”

Marston’s firm was best known for designs in the Mediterranean style, and in the 1920s his were considered by many to be the best Spanish Colonial Revival examples in Southern California, according to Tuttle. The tours will include a Marston-designed Mediterranean house’s exterior and gardens, not seen in three decades.

Also on the tour is a radical change of style by Marston--the Grace Nicholson residence in 1924, done in the Imperial Chinese Courtyard style, and for the past three decades best known as the home of the Pacific Asia Museum.

The docent-guided bus tours will feature more than 30 Marston-designed buildings, with three open for interior viewing.

Reservations are required at (626) 441-6333 or at www.pasadenaheritage.org. Cost is $35 for Pasadena Heritage members, $40 for nonmembers.

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Kathy Bryant may be reached at kbryant @socal.rr.com.