Would You Like A Moat With That?
I went to look at this dump on Alameda that a client might buy, and as you can imagine, she said, “What can we do about the yard?” She was using the term “yard” rather loosely, as you can see. From the front, the house is a perfect Christmas center-hall colonial sitting about ten feet from the sidewalk, but it has an enormous triangular lot that drops as much as forty feet, and vertigo can start to set in on the second (of four) floors.
The former garage on the side and accessed from the upper street is now just a driveway, an additional garage on the lower street is connected to the house by an impossibly perilous flight of steps that call to mind “Young Frankenstein.” The house has been standing securely on its Hoover Dam-looking foundation since 1912, so I don’t worry too much about it going ass over teakettle, but the disproportionately large balcony on the top floor does vaguely resemble the brontosaurus ribs on Fred Flintstone’s car window, and we all know how that turned out.
I’m recommending that any regrading to attempt to connect the house and yard be as minimal as possible, little islands of flat terrain connected by stone steps set on a random assortment of low stone walls, kind of like this site a few blocks away. (Even this will require a few truckloads of rock and fill….) Difficult sites like these are often the price one pays for a spectacular view, which this dump definitely has, and the price may well be right because of it. You’ll never be able to play croquet there, but would you miss it?
Anti-Frank Lloyd Wrights is what I call things like this. Ante-Frank Lloyd Wrights would work too, I guess. Bring all your white-bread cultural shibboleths with you wherever you go, and plunk them down without any regard for where you are, or what’s already there.
I loved the 1890′s carpenter-gothic palazzos in LA. The only evidence that they weren’t situated on a posh street in Narragansett were the two radio-antenna palm trees flanking the front sidewalk. I lived in one briefly, on Miramar, a block off Third, just on the other side of the Harbor Freeway from Angels’ Flight. The damned thing had about eighteen rooms on three floors, but the most amazing thing to me was that it had burgundy-colored watered-silk wall covering (you can’t exactly call it wallpaper, right?) in the first-floor rooms, above what appeared to be varnished redwood wainscotting on the lower third of the walls.
There were a dozen of them in that long block. All gone now, bulldozed in the late Seventies for what appears to be some sort of medical or penal institution behind a very ugly chain-link fence — festooned, the last time I saw it, with witches’ knickers and plastic rings from cheap six-packs.
Sadly, Things That Aren’t There Any More didn’t even bother.
There’s a story about that house that I’ve never told, and it occurs to me that I ought to tell it somewhere while I’m still kicking. It isn’t actually a story about the house itself, but it always struck me that it was a part of American folklore that ought to be recorded somewhere.
The houses sat back from the street, and and were elevated some 20 feet or so above it, and the sidewalks descended in groups of two or three steps at intervals to a cut in a concrete retaining wall along the street. I was sitting on the steps with my coffee cup early one morning, enjoying the view, when a skinny old geezer came out of the house next door for a smoke.
We got to talking. He was an old grifter, and when he saw how young I was, and heard that I was out of work, and hard up, offered to teach me how to plug public phone boxes. I never asked, but I gather that this was something cooked up in the Depression, although I have no idea whether or not the phone booths of the Sixties had been around that early.
Anyway, it was amazingly clever, involving both technical ingenuity, and a deep understanding of human nature. It turns out that the old-style pull-down coin returns on the phone boxes were exactly the width of a paper matchbook cover. If you rolled such a cover into a tight cylinder, and wrapped it with a shoelace, you could lay it in the round bottom of the coin return, then close the pull down lever. By holding onto the end of the shoelace, you could then give it a controlled yank, and it forced the matchbook cover up, out of sight, into the coin return chute.
Next came the human engineering part. When callers got a busy signal, they’d hang up and wait for their dime to be rejected. When it didn’t fall into the return as expected, they’d give the side of the phone box a thump, mutter shit! or some other appropriate expletive, and be on their way.
After a carefully calculated interval, my new friend would come by, and using one of the flat steel bristles from a streetsweeper, picked up from the gutter, he’d open the coin return, pry carefully, and all the blocked dimes would spill into a little chamois bag he carried for the purpose. If he did this carefully, the matchbook cover would remain where it was, and he could repeat the process again and again.
He said that by riding around on an old bicycle he had, he could plug selected phones in a several mile radius, and — he claimed — make an average of $200 a week from his illicit labors.
The phone company — it was still Ma Bell in those days — were on to the scam, but he allowed as how they were easy to spot, and that he’d figured out when they made their rounds. He swore that he’d only been caught once, and never in LA.
I practiced the trick until I could do it, at least the first part, but I was both too lazy and too uptight to actually use it.
Well, okay then. The Internet is now privy to this bit of folklore. It seems the least I could do in return for the old gent’s kindness, especially since cellphones have put his descendants — if there were any besides me — out of business for good.
Portland has been pretty lucky; the only really nice residential neighborhood that was summarily torn down was inner northwest, and it happened from the 30′s through the 50′s, and the area around Lloyd Center, same era.
When I look at that house, all I see are hazards. It’s a death trap for babies, elderly, children, drunks and anyone who isn’t really limber and coordinated.
That’s what the client seems to be hearing from everyone; they call it a “cliffhanger.” It doesn’t scare me, a 13th floor dweller, but I suppose that’s true.
The main thing is, does it creak? I don’t mean like floorboards do when they don’t have a slab under them, I mean those scary crack sounds in the wee hours. Also, does it sway? Given what you call the Hoover Dam under under it, I’d guess not, but the balcony looks iffy, especially if it was built in 1912. I like a view too, but I’d prefer it to be supported by caissons and steel beams, which of course no ordinary house-buyer could afford.
Oh, and sorry about the long, off-topic comment from last night, Hag. I don’t know what I was thinking, but a certain nostalgia from my own experience with ancient houses overcame me. It probably would have been better as a post on my own blog, rather than cluttering up the comments section of yours. I’ll try to be a little more considerate in the future.
I enjoyed the story, William… I just hadn’t gotten around to responding to it. It’s quite sad what happened to the old residential neighborhoods near downtown LA; even the intact ones are shabby and dangerous, though the houses are nicer than those in “better” areas.
The house seems sound; I could detect no cracked plaster or floors out of level. The top deck, as I mentioned, was added later and I think ought to be cut back or removed. Even if it is safe, it doesn’t look safe.
Well, there is — or was — Angelino Heights. I was last there in the late Eighties, when folks were making a determined effort to restore the neighborhood, and the houses. Some impressive work had been done since it was declared a historic preservation site in 1983, but I got the feeling, walking around Carroll Ave., and talking to some of the owners, that the money came mostly from individuals, and that other funding was pretty scarce. They seemed hopeful, but nervous.
I hope that it worked out, as the Heights themselves are in a wonderful location, with amazing views of the city below, and the island of high rises in the distance, but I don’t really know.
I enjoyed your story, too, WT. I have never been to L.A., but I would have liked to have seen it back in the 70s.
I enjoyed the story too, WT.
First of all ……Ugh! Not a fan of topped trees. Along with being ugly, those trees create a lot of shade that limits the options to cover that ugly concrete wall .
Is that lower concrete wall the extent of the yard? If so, how about the following? :
1) Cut down those trees. They’re not appropriate for the situation, and therefore add considerable maintenance.
2) Which way does it face? Guessing that those trees were put there to provide afternoon shade. If that’s the case, and desired , a columner tree , possibly two, such as the various columner Red Maples, Acer rubrum ‘ Columnare’,'Bowhall ,or ‘Autumn Spire’ placed as far up , and to the right , as possible.
3) Across the top of the wall? A low wall, &/or a small(?) hedge , size depending upon the view, or the need to block unwanted views. Just a planting would work , but there would be the danger of going over while trimming the back side. If it’s something that wouldn’t need it(low maintenance
\=no maintenance), or you could guarantee( good luck!) that it would be done on a ladder from below, then this would be less of a concern . If you need to level it a bit, the wall might be necessary, unless there’s room to lower the grade at the foundation.4) “Hoover Dam”? Cover it . Please.
With what?
a) Grasses . You could get the height, without a lot of horizontal spread.
b) Narrow upright shrubs, preferably evergreen, but that might add to maintenance, or take a long time for smaller, slower-growing varieties.
c) Espaliered versions of larger shrubs/trees, but again, would add to maintenance.
d) Self-clinging vines, especially evergreen, such as ivy or euonymus . It would have to be kept off the house proper, so not my first choice.
e) Attach some sort of lattice, fencing, or wire frame to it, and grow non-self-clinging(to a surface, that is) items such as roses and clematis. (They look great together!) (‘Zephrin Drouhin’ + ‘Duchess of Edinburgh’ , ['Graham Thomas' or 'Golden Showers'] + C.vitacella ‘ Etoile Violette’, for example)
f) Some sort of surface treatment to the concrete itself. ( You know of anything? – not my thing )
As for that example of terraced walls , not sure I like that example. The terraces are rather narrow , and the plantings, even when mature , will likely be out of scale with the walls and the house. The stone is the focal point . Okay, if that’s the intent.
What about a switchback , essentially creating a ramp, rather than steps? Don’t know your client’s age ,intended length of stay, or physical condition , but it might be advantageous at some point, if for nothing else, than moving objects up or down.
The stairs? Again …..Ugh! Makes me claustrophobic just looking at it . What about a boardwalk type thing that comes off at a level above that doorway? Then either remove the gate, or extend it(the “boardwalk”) far enough that it could open, with stairs at the end . ( Spiral?) Maybe such that a door opens from the lower porch(?) onto it , so that one could go directly from the porch to the yard. *shrug* ?????
I also thought of vines; Im a big fan of Boston Ivy and Virginia Creeper for the concrete, but the maintenance is always an issue. The example I showed isn’t a great one, but it did make use of a previously inaccessible area. (I didn’t do the landscaping and would have planted it much differently…) As for the topped trees, I’m with you. They look dreadful, and I would remove most of them and try to salvage-prune maybe one. The rear of the house faces south toward the view to the south and west, but the house is partly protected from afternoon sun by mature Douglas firs, so the topped trees serve no purpose, except possibly to stabilize the soil.
Given the steepness of the site, and the great distance between upper and lower areas, I think a lot of rock is pretty unavoidable; I plan to make it as irregular an low as I can and plant it heavily with native ferns, salal, and such.
Sadly, the stairs will probably remain as is; scary as they are, they perform a valuable function, but elsewhere I will try to use ramps as much as possible; so much easier for hauling things around, even if you aren’t feeble.
I liked your story too WT.
It’s funny, I learned the same trick from an old codger when I was living in the Bay Area about the same timeframe (coulda been the same guy??).
He also found a way to ensure any prospective callers would “always” get a busy signal – hence a returned coin. I think he unscrewed the receiver part of the hand-set and placed a piece of foil or something in there.
Anyway, I never tried it. But the memory of this guy giving me step-by-step instructions stuck with me forever.
At least now I know I wasn’t the only one with this experience.
Interesting. It just has to have been one of those Depression-era hobo tricks, like riding the rails, or marking the gates of houses near the railroad tracks where the people were kind and the handouts generous. Even at the time, I figured that this guy wasn’t a lone genius, but I never heard about it anywhere else. It definitely has a Woody Guthrie feel, though. I wonder what other examples of human ingenuity from that period have been lost forever?
Too bad, too, because we may be needing some of that ingenuity again.
Yeah, Hag, the thought had occurred to me. So did the thought that we’ve forgotten a lot about what was once meant by solidarity.
Found your websites on AskJeeves, great articles, but the site looks awkward into my browser setup, but performs fine in IE. choose figure.