A Victorian Showcase Gleams Anew
After Murray Burns gave up driving, he took to touring Los Angeles by bicycle and pedaled his way into Angelino Heights.
It was the start of a long love story.
The neighborhood of old Victorian homes southwest of Dodger Stadium fascinated Burns, who had grown up in a tract of what he called “cookie-cutter” houses. The Victorians were tall and strangely ornamented. They all were different yet clearly of a style, with their turrets and broad porches, gingerbread siding and lacy spindle work. More than half the homes were faded and splintered. After dark, you could imagine apparitions drifting through dim parlors.
“I thought it would be fun to live in a ghost house,” Burns said, recalling the day in the 1970s when he found one to buy. It was a red, two-story place on Carroll Avenue. He grabbed the for-sale sign and marched across the street to see Planaria Price, the owner.
“I had the sign in my hand and said, ‘I want to buy this house,’” Burns remembered. “She said, ‘Don’t you want to see it first?’”
He not only saw it and bought it, but he took a liking to Price too. They got married and are now two of the people most responsible for the gentrification of Angelino Heights, an 1880s development that has become a showcase again. A century after they were built, the rows of Victorians on Carroll and Kellam avenues and a few nearby streets were declared part of the city’s first historic preservation overlay zone, meaning that buildings in the neighborhood are protected.
Houses cannot be torn down. A board of appointed volunteers, acting as advisors to the city Planning Department, meets twice a month in an old firehouse to review restoration plans. Although a number of properties have been left in disrepair, most have been meticulously restored--often at costs exceeding $100,000 apiece. Original wiring, plumbing and masonry foundations have been replaced. New glasswork and hardwood floors have been installed. Exterior walls and trim have been painted in shades of lilac, gray, yellow, green and blue.
Burns and Price have been the most ambitious renovators. They have bought and refurbished 14 homes over the years, selling three and renting out others. One is now on the market for $750,000. Burns recalled one home they bought for about $100,000 in the mid-1990s. Granted, they sank money into it, but it is now valued at $350,000.
“Architecture,” Burns said, “is like fashion. This neighborhood got hot.”
Burns is 61 and wears his graying hair to his shoulders. He pads around in bare feet and T-shirts. Though not a member of the volunteer panel, he goes to meetings and voices strong opinions, said Tracy Stone, a member and former chairman of the advisory group.
“He pushes people,” Stone said. “I think he’d like to hold everyone to the same high standards of restoration [that he holds for himself]. When we clash, it’s usually momentary. I like him a lot.”
Sitting one afternoon in the “cozy corner” of the Queen Anne-style Victorian that he and Planaria share on Carroll Avenue, Burns reflected on his slow journey to aesthetic appreciation. As a first-grader, he brought home a picture he had drawn of a horse. “My father said, ‘What ... is this? Horses aren’t green.’” That stunted him until he bought his first Victorian and left behind a one-room apartment in Hollywood. He moved in with only a radio, some books and a futon.
At night he lay gazing at the high ceilings and strange features of the home. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out the purpose of the lacy millwork that lined portions of the ceiling, forming tiny fence-like borders to some of the rooms.
“After a while it dawned on me--it was art,” Burns said. “The milled wood creates wonderful shadows.”
In fact, he noticed a similar effect in other features of the old Victorians. The lace curtains, leaded glass and flickering gas lamps all make wonderful patterns of light that change “subtly, constantly, through the days and seasons,” Burns said.
The couple’s Queen Anne house, framed by turrets and filled with arresting patterns in wood and wall and ceiling paper, was built in 1888. It is historic cultural monument No. 77 in Los Angeles, one of more than a dozen homes on Carroll Avenue with that status. It is described in a file in the downtown offices of the Cultural Heritage Commission: “The turrets, verandas and generous proportions of the architectural style were considered as charming as the good queen herself.”
The neighborhood, detailed in a separate file, was established in 1886 during “the first days of the great Los Angeles land boom that followed the lowering of railroad fares from the East. Lots sold for about $500, and the houses probably cost between $5,000 and $10,000.”
The upper-middle-class enclave “formed part of the first ring of satellite suburbs around Los Angeles.... Cable cars operated from 1888 to 1902 and were replaced by electric street cars. The street cars, which passed Carroll Avenue at 10-minute intervals, made the run [downtown] in 16 minutes.”
Burns, Price and seven neighbors formed the Carroll Avenue Restoration Foundation in 1987. That year, Richard Collins became one of several owners of Victorians who have moved a house to the district because of its special status. Collins’ hulking gray-green home, accented with teal and 22-carat gold leaf, had been built in 1888 near Boyle Heights.
“All kinds of [electrical] wires had to be raised and lowered” on city streets to move it, Collins said. Among the house’s features are a cast-iron mantel, a porcelain stove and a proclamation commemorating the election of his great- grandfather, Michael T. Collins, to the Los Angeles City Council in 1886. “This is a unique neighborhood in that it really is a neighborhood,” he said. “We all know each other.”
The Foy House, the city’s first three-story home, was moved to the neighborhood in 1992. Residents take pride in such things. Ron Ross, a builder who has helped to refurbish 30 or 40 of the homes, shows off photos of Angelino Heights in its infancy--when homes were built with square nails and hand tools. “Some of the places I take apart, I’m absolutely amazed they’re still standing,” he said.
Price, who discovered the neighborhood in the early 1970s while looking for a shortcut to the Hollywood Freeway, remembers investing $20,000 in the red house she later sold to her future husband. The area has since become popular among Hollywood producers--”East of Eden,” “Inherit the Wind” and “Modern Problems” were shot here--and the kids love it on Halloween. But otherwise, she said, “It’s like a real secret. People live [in L.A.] their whole lives and don’t know about this place.”
