San Pedro couple turns an old Montgomery Ward into a loft of eccentricity
On the first Thursday of every month in San Pedro, art lovers wander the streets of L.A.’s port town hunting for discoveries. If they stop by Gallery 741, proprietors Patti Kraakevik and longtime partner George Woytovich will gladly show their art, but more treasures reside upstairs in the couple’s stunning two-story loft, a former ‘30s Montgomery Ward. In a region where adaptive reuse has never been more important, the department store-turned-loft represents one couple’s admittedly eccentric vision of how to forge a future from the past. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
The entrance is designed to look like a movie palace lobby, with a grand staircase and a chandelier from El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
On a landing: a neon-lighted concession stand. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Inside Kraakevik and Woytovich’s self-described “cabinet of curiosities,” maple floors and natural light streaming through loft windows set the stage for their vintage collections. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Off the wall: panels from the elevator of the original
A detail of an elevator panel. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
A fairly recent addition is the birdcage elevator car that the couple found at a Chicago salvage yard. It took them a year to restore the car to its former glory. Kraakevik jokingly calls it an expensive lamp. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Woytovich and Kraakevik under a vintage poster for the 1946 flick by Lesley Selander, director of more than 100 movies -- mostly Westerns and sci-fi -- in the ‘30s, ‘40s and early ‘50s. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Why color a loft with the usual hanging plants when you can have a produce scale and
Woytovich takes a spin in his Atchison revolving door, which has its original mahogany, curved glass and brass dating to around 1900. Revolving doors that used to grace the Westclox Factory Building in Peru, Ill., now lead to the bathroom and closets. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
The view toward the bedroom reveals, on the left, Chinese bifold doors believed to be about 300 years old, and on the right, old-fashioned drive-in movie speakers. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the master closet: a reproduction film poster, vintage camera and tripod, and vintage cabinet converted into a glass-paneled armoire. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
The couple’s passion to collect began with the purchase of a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox, which allowed them to play 78s that Kraakevik inherited from her father. The longtime real estate professionals were soon hooked. They outgrew an Encino home, then a Westwood home. They scouted for a new building that would accommodate their rapidly expanding collection, and they found it in the former San Pedro department store in 2003. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
The coffee set rests with other discoveries in a Parker pen display case from the 1930s or ‘40s. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
“We don’t have a mentor, nor any methodology in our search for antiques,” Woytovich says. “It’s whatever strikes us, and more often than not, it’s the first thing we see.” Pictured here: a portion of an Art Deco bar original from a hotel in Atlanta. The full bar originally was 30 feet long; the center is used here, and the sides are deployed as kitchen cabinets. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
A long, lean room that leads to a wine cellar will be finished as a 1930s or 1940s Streamliner Train Club Car, an Art Deco-style rail car with a bar and piano near the entrance. Faux windows will yield views of painted scenery. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
In the bathroom are theater seat ends from the
And a garden, naturally. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Woytovich sits on the roof of the San Pedro loft. He and Kraakevik plan to transform the building’s sprawling basement into an improv theater and an extension of their Gallery 741. As Kraakevik says, their work is never done.
More Homes of the Times: See the new and the novel in our Home Tours gallery. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)