San Fernando Valley – Page 8

Aerial Views: Van Nuys in the 1920s

July 23, 2018July 24, 2018Posted in HistoryTagged 1920s, Adohr Farms, Aerial, CA, history, Runnymede Poultry Farms, San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys and the Valley2 Comments

Van Nuys was established in 1911, and soon after people settled here to work and live.

The Southern Pacific freight trains ran along tracks which are now the location of the Metro Orange Line.

An agricultural economy supported citrus packing plants, animal feed for horses, cows, chickens; and the burgeoning development of the San Fernando Valley brought lumber suppliers to Van Nuys.

These 1924 images of Van Nuys come from the Los Angeles Public Library Archives.

In the first photo below, we are standing near Oxnard and Van Nuys Blvd. looking north with the train tracks and crossing signals visible in the middle left side. The town has the air of a farming village with rows of fruit trees planted and open space between structures. In the very top of the photo one can make out Van Nuys High School which was badly damaged in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake and rebuilt in an Art Deco style afterwards.

In the second photo, below, we are flying over the area near Oxnard and Van Nuys Bl. looking NE towards the site of our present day government buildings. Small, humble houses dot the landscape immediately adjacent to the industrial area along the rail tracks. Van Nuys Lumber Co. was probably located on Aetna St. one block north of Oxnard. One can also make out small rows of pitched roof dense houses in the middle right area. Perhaps these were “worker” housing for the people who loaded the trains, and did the manual labor which was required to move goods from Van Nuys to the freight trains.

2018: Aerial View of Oxnard at VNB looking NE.

In the third image, below, from 1925, we have an overview of Adohr Dairy Farms (18000 Ventura Bl) and Runnymeade Poultry Farm. This is in Encino west of White Oak.

CSUN has a large collection of Adohr Farms Images. On their website they have a brief bio of the Adohr story:

“The Adohr Farms milk dairy was located in Tarzana, California at Ventura Boulevard and Lindley Avenue. The dairy was established by Merritt Adamson 1916, and named for his wife, Rhoda (spelled backwards). During the Depression, the Adamson’s sold off most of their land. In the late 1940s, Adohr Farms moved to Camarillo, and was eventually sold to Southland Corporation in the mid-1960s.”

Photo below: Adohr Farms, 1937. Notice unusual udder-shaped topiary along road.

print — Aerial view of Adhor Certified Farm at 18000 Ventura Boulevard, Reseda, circa 1937. (CSUN)

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Dima Otvertchenko’s Blue Hour Photographs

July 12, 2018July 13, 2018Posted in PhotographyTagged Blue Hour, CA, Dima Otvertchenko, Links, Photography, San Fernando ValleyLeave a comment

For most of the day, especially in summer, the San Fernando Valley is baked in a stultifying, blinding, suffocating heat and intense sunlight. In those hours, peaking in the afternoon, it is an ugly place. Go to Sherman Way near the 170 at rush hour when its 105 degrees and see if you disagree.

But at dusk, near sundown, the Blue Hour appears.

And photographer Dima Otvertchenko, a New Jersey raised shooter living in North Hollywood, has a particular sensitivity and artistry in capturing our valley after the sun has gone below horizon.

Imagine how temperatures have cooled down after the heat of the day, how people have come home from work, eaten, and finally can go out for walk in a more temperate and gentle city.

His work is modern noir: graceful, atmospheric, cinematic, and magical. This is the San Fernando Valley at its most merciful hour, astutely photographed.

All photographs used with the permission of Dima Otvertchenko. Here is his Instagram.

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Van Nuys at Dusk: July 2, 2018.

July 3, 2018September 9, 2019Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "Civic Center", "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", "Real Estate", 2018, buildings, CA, CD6, Dusk, Erwin St., Essay, Homelessness, investment, July 2, LAPD, Links, Mall, Neglect, Photography, San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys and the ValleyLeave a comment

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The Van Nuys Experimental District (VNED)

May 10, 2018May 10, 2018Posted in ArchitectureTagged CA, Crisis, Dwellings, Homeless, Housing, Links, Multi Family, Planning, Proposals, Rent, San Fernando Valley, Sweden, urban, Van Nuys Experimental District, VNEDLeave a comment

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Given that the largest amount of new housing built in Van Nuys consists of tents on sidewalks, the idea of taking a portion of this district, say from Oxnard to VanOwen along Van Nuys Boulevard, and re-christening it as “The Van Nuys Experimental District” (VNED) is an idea whose time has come.

Along with light rail, bike roads and alternate modes of transport beyond private automobiles, the VNED would allow architects great freedom to build modern, inventive and attractive buildings providing apartments for a city starving for it.

If these buildings could be tax deferred for developers for 25 years, maybe the high costs of construction could be partially ameliorated.

Professional complainers, who begin and end every discussion with “where will they park?” should instead ask, “where will we live?” Amateur economists, who hate new housing because “it’s too expensive” should ask if limiting housing will reduce its price.

The photographs on this page are taken from a website called Architizer.

The photographs below were taken by me on Victory near Sepulveda on the south side of the “99 Ranch Market” shopping center.

Victory Bl. east of Sepulveda, Van Nuys, CA 5/10/18

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Option A: Just Plain Places

May 1, 2018January 30, 2020Posted in Option ATagged "Councilwoman Nury Martinez", "MacLeod Ale", Aetna, Architecture, Bessemer, Calvert, Councilwoman Sheila Kuehl, demolition, Diversity, Economy, Industrial, Kesterville, LA Metro, light rail, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Option A, Oxnard, Preservation, Public Transportation, San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys and the Valley2 Comments

This blog has written 13 other times on “Option A”, a Metro LA proposal by the public transportation agency to wipe out 33 acres of industry in Van Nuys, near the junction of Oxnard and Kester, and replace it with a light rail service yard. It would destroy 1,000 jobs, displace 186 businesses and flatten 58 buildings.

Though the scheme has been public knowledge since September 2017, property owners, workers, renters and the neighbors near here still stand on thin ice, awaiting official June 2018 word whether this whole district is sentenced to death, or if another site (B, C, or D), near the Metrolink tracks up on Raymer Street will be chosen instead.

A photo walk around here yesterday, along Oxnard, Aetna, Bessemer and Calvert, to document some buildings that may be gone in a few years, was also an opportunity to show that this area has great potential beyond its current light industrial use.

In gravel yards, on cracked and broken asphalt, under decaying wood, on treeless, depopulated and narrow roads, there are ingredients for a nice urban area of some new housing, some new cafes, some places where trees, lighting, discreet signage and pavement of cobblestones could bring an infusion of 24/7, urban, walkable, bikeable activity to the neighborhood.

It is already an incubator of creativity with makers of exquisite decorative hardware, superb custom cabinetry, music recording studios, Vespa and Mustang restorers, stained glass makers, welders, boat builders, and kitchen designers. These businesses, incidentally, are staffed by mostly local owners and workers, many of whom are but minutes away, or take the bus or even walk to work. Rents are currently affordable, often 50 cents, $1 or $2 a square foot.

MacLeod Ale, maker of fine British style beers, since 2014, is on the north side of Calvert and is not threatened with demolition but its existence and success is a testament to the potential for innovation in this area.

Ironically, the very wonderful addition of a landscaped bike path and the Metro Orange Line bus in 2005 is now threatening the area because of future conversion to a light rail system. Yet the “Option A” district is thriving, even if it is shabby in places, because it is a work zone of skilled, employed, productive people.

Politicians who often talk ad nauseum about “diversity” should come here with mouths closed and observe men and women: Mexican, Armenian, Norwegian, German, Persian, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Irish, Scottish, Israeli-Americans, all the hyphenations of ethnicity and gender, who don’t care about where anyone came from, but only about where they are going in life.

This is Los Angeles. This is diversity. This is economic prosperity. This is within walking distance of “downtown Van Nuys.”

Yet short-sighted officials, bureaucratic ignoramuses with grandiose titles, flush with public money, would consider wiping out the very type of neighborhood whose qualities are needed, wanted and venerated.

Option A must not happen. This is what it looks like now.

Imagine what it could look like with the right, guiding hands of investment, preservation, planning and protection.

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Squandered Opportunities

April 27, 2018April 29, 2018Posted in EnvironmentTagged "Las Vacas Negras", Architecture, CVS, Erwin, Homeless, Homelessness, Hummers, LA Fitness, Metro, mini-mall, Orange Line, Parking Lot, San Fernando Valley, sepulveda, Van Nuys and the Valley, Zoning5 Comments

Nearing completion, now, is a one-story mini-mall on the north end of the LA Fitness parking lot near Sepulveda and Erwin.

Pleasantly innocuous, in a beige/brown way, the mall (with circa 1999 cornice) is being landscaped, pretty extensively, all around, with various trees and shrubs to decorate the sea of asphalt.

Zoned commercial, this is also next door to a Wendy’s, also recently naturalized, with new water saving plants and a modernistic, horizontally striped renovation. Customers who feast on industrial meat, sugary soda, and frozen French Fries, all trucked in from Iowa, will do so surrounded by native California succulents.

This is all bordering the Metro Orange Line Parking Lot, 50% of which is occupied as a storage center for not-yet-sold new Keyes Automobiles. This scientifically zoned area is irrationally sited along an efficient, pleasant bus line that runs on schedule and connects Van Nuys to Hollywood and Downtown Los Angeles.

Left over in the new mini-mall layout is a rectangular island of land that, in my imagination, I envision as a small apartment building or even a white, wooden Colonial house, a residential arrangement that provides living space for people who can walk next door to the gym, stop for milk at CVS, ride their bikes on the bike path, and most importantly, are there to populate, energize and humanize a sea of parking spaces.

I picked “Colonial” to lovingly pander to the nearby residents of privileged, filmed upon Orion Ave. hoping they might not object to an 18^th Century House with a garden in front, housing a nice coffee place or a fort-monthly locale for filming Target and Walmart commercials.

Why not build something on this open spot like these below:

But, for now, the neat, empty rectangle of land is unoccupied with forms either natural or man-made.

This waste of land, and the time-wasting, perpetual, irritating and circular question, “Where will they park?” dominates the beginning and end of any discussion of new apartments, housing or commercial building in Los Angeles.

If there is no room for 1,000 New Hummers in that New 200 Unit Apartment…then I say, to hell with it, let people sleep on the street in tents!

What exists, when it’s built, is a battleground of short-tempered drivers circling parking lots, looking for parking, even when there are 2,000 or 3,000 spaces provided for their temporary storage!

So the opportunity for a new, innovative, and imaginative kind of development, one that integrates the commercial and the residential, is again squandered.

Why?

What have we got to lose?

We are already losing.

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