Secret stairs: a walking guide to the historic staircases of Los Angeles PDF
Preview Secret stairs: a walking guide to the historic staircases of Los Angeles
SSEECCRREETT SSTTAAIIRRSS AA WWAALLkkIINNGG GGuuIIddEE ttoo ttHHEE HHIISSttooRRIICC SSttAAIIRRCCAASSEESS ooFF LLooSS AANNGGEELLEESS CCHHAARRLLEESS FFLLEEMMIINNGG SECRET STAIRS A WAlking guide to the hiStoRiC StAiRCASeS of loS AngeleS Copyright ©2010 by Charles Fleming All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part or in any form or format without the written permission of the publisher. Published by: Santa Monica Press LLC P.O. Box 1076 Santa Monica, CA 90406-1076 1-800-784-9553 www.santamonicapress.com [email protected] Printed in the United States Santa Monica Press books are available at special quantity discounts when purchased in bulk by corporations, organizations, or groups. Please call our Special Sales department at 1-800-784-9553. This book is intended to provide general information. The publisher, author, distributor, and copyright owner are not engaged in rendering professional advice or services. The publisher, author, distributor, and copyright owner are not liable or responsible to any person or group with respect to any loss, illness, or injury caused or alleged to be caused by the information found in this book. ISBN-13 978-1-59580-050-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fleming, Charles. Secret stairs : a walking guide to the historic staircases of Los Angeles / by Charles Fleming. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-59580-050-3 1. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Guidebooks. 2. Staircases—California—Los Angeles— Guidebooks. 3. Historic sites—California—Los Angeles—Guidebooks. 4. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Buildings, structures, etc.—Guidebooks. 5. Walking—California—Los Angeles—Guidebooks. I. Title. F869.L83F583 2010 917.94’940454—dc22 2009043465 Cover and interior design and production by Future Studio Cover illustration and maps by Bryan Duddles SSEECCRREETT SSTTAAIIRRSS AA WWAALLkkIINNGG GGuuIIddEE ttoo ttHHEE HHIISSttooRRIICC SSttAAIIRRCCAASSEESS ooFF LLooSS AANNGGEELLEESS CCHHAARRLLEESS FFLLEEMMIINNGG CONTENTS Introduction ...................................... 6 PART ONE: PASADENA AND THE EAST Walk #1: Pasadena—La Loma Road ........................ 13 Walk #2: Eagle Rock ....................................... 17 Walk #3: Glassell Park North—York and Beyond .......... 21 Walk #4: Glassell Park South—Taylor Yard ................ 25 Walk #5: Mt. Washington .................................. 29 Walk #6: Hermon and Highland Park ..................... 35 Walk #7: Highland Park—Southwest Museum ............. 39 Walk #8: Highland Park—Highlands ....................... 45 Walk #9: El Sereno Circles ................................. 51 Walk #10: Happy Valley and Montecito Heights ............ 55 Walk #11: Downtown Los Angeles .......................... 61 PART TWO: ECHO PARK Walk #12: Echo Park Lake Victorians ....................... 71 Walk #13: Laveta Terrace .................................... 77 Walk #14: Magic Gas ........................................ 81 Walk #15: Avalon-Baxter Loop ............................. 85 Walk #16: Allesandro Loop ................................. 91 Walk #17: Fellowship Park .................................. 97 PART THREE: SILVER LAKE Walk #18: Music Box Loop .................................. 105 Walk #19: Silver Lake Circles .............................. 111 Walk #20: Sunset Junction Loop ........................... 115 Walk #21: Silver Lake Terraces West ....................... 121 Walk #22: Coffee Table Loop ............................... 125 Walk #23: Astro Loop ...................................... 131 Walk #24: Silver Lake Terraces East ....................... 137 Walk #25: Swan’s Way ...................................... 141 Walk #26: Cove-Loma Vista Loop .......................... 145 Walk #27: Silver Lake Court ................................ 151 Walk #28: Los Angeles River Loop ......................... 157 PART FOUR: HOLLYWOOD AND LOS FELIZ Walk #29: Los Feliz—Griffith Park Loop ................... 165 Walk #30: Franklin Hills East—Lyric Loop ................ 171 Walk #31: Franklin Hills West—Radio-Prospect Loop ..... 175 Walk #32: Fern Dell and Immaculate Heart ................ 181 Walk #33: Bronson Canyon Loop .......................... 185 Walk #34: Beachwood Canyon ............................. 189 Walk #35: Temple Hill ..................................... 193 Walk #36: Whitley Heights ................................. 199 Walk #37: Hollywood Bowl and High Tower Loop ......... 203 Walk #38: Universal City—Happy Trails ................... 207 PART FIVE: SANTA MONICA AND THE WEST Walk #39: Santa Monica—Bluffs and Beach Walk .......... 213 Walk #40: Santa Monica—Rustic Canyon Loop ............ 219 Walk #41: Pacific Palisades—Castellammare .............. 225 Walk #42: Pacific Palisades—Giant Steps .................. 231 Afterword ........................................ 236 Acknowledgements ............................... 238 INTRODUCTION Los Angeles, the city of smog and SigAlerts, is not considered a haven for hikers and walkers. The freeways are full, the surface streets are overcrowded, and the public transit sys- tem is feeble. We have almost no pedestrian-friendly, car-free zones and offer our citizens fewer public parks and less public green space per capita than any major city in America. But Los Angeles, secretly, is a wonderful place to walk—if you know where to go. This book is designed to celebrate urban hiking by ex- posing the semi-secret network of public staircases that lace the hillsides of certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. The staircases themselves are historical reminders of a time when Los Ange- les was not a city of cars. City planners and developers installed them as direct routes for pedestrians—housewives and children particularly—to get down the hills to school, the supermarket, and transit lines. The city at that time was well served by trolleys, streetcars, buses, and light-rail systems. The staircases were clustered around steep hillside communities near these transit lines—especially communities that developed in the 1920s like Silver Lake, Echo Park, Mt. Washington, and El Sereno, and the elevated areas of Highland Park, Hollywood, and Santa Monica. The staircase-to-trolley system was so much a part of the landscape that developers in some areas built houses that had no other access to the outside world. These “walk-streets,” several of which appear in this book, were set on hillsides with- out driveways or garages. Everything going in and out had to employ the public staircase running, usually, across the front of the house. The trolleys and streetcars are gone, but the staircases re- main. Many of them are forgotten paths, neglected and unused. Many of them are also direct routes into stately old Los Angeles neighborhoods that many Angelinos have never even seen. My first exposure to the staircases was a house on Loma Vista, a walk-street in eastern Silver Lake, where I lived for a short while in 1981. I gradually became aware of other staircases around the area, found them enchanting, and later started walk- ing them in earnest. When I decided to explore and chronicle all the staircases in Silver Lake, and maybe Echo Park, I imagined including about 20 to 25 sets of stairs. I discovered there were more than 60 of them in Silver Lake alone, and at least half that many again in Echo Park. But once I’d started, I didn’t know where to stop, so I kept going. Walking in the early mornings, seldom meeting anyone as I hunted staircases, I felt like Henry Hudson searching for the Northwest Passage. Silver Lake walks led into Franklin Hills, which led into Los Feliz, which led into Hollywood. . . . In the end, I walked, measured, studied, photographed, and mapped more than 275 individual staircases across the Los Angeles area, as far east as Pasadena and as far west as Pacific Palisades. The original model for this book is a series of circular “pub walk” books I encountered when I first started walking and hiking in England and Ireland. In those slim volumes, the walker is guided on a long country stroll that starts and ends in the parking lot of a public house or restaurant, to which he is en- couraged to repair afterward for refreshment and restoration. Each of the walks in this collection, with one or two ex- ceptions, begins and ends at an easily located café or restaurant that provides food, drink, and other comforts. Each is served by public transport and is measured for distance and difficul- ty—“one” being a gentle stroll, and “five,” a serious hike—and includes the time required and the number of actual staircase Secret Stairs 8 steps involved. (The time and distances are approximations.) Many of the shorter walks could be combined to form a longer walk: Silver Lake Terraces—East could join Swan’s Way, for ex- ample, or Magic Gas could meet Avalon-Baxter and then fold into Fellowship Park. With the exception of a Downtown Los Angeles walk that includes a hotel lobby or two, none of these walks involves any private property. Though some of the city’s staircases have periodically been gated or locked by local resi- dents claiming the stairs as their own, they are public byways, on public property, built and maintained by taxpayer dollars, and are meant to be employed and enjoyed by everyone. So, start walking.
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