L.A. Places: Mid-Century Dingbat Apartments

Some blog love to a very nice set of Dingbat photos taken near Culver City c.2009:

L.A. Places: Mid-Century Dingbat Apartments


I do sometimes miss the ridiculousness of the SoCal Dingbats. They are a class unto themelves.

The Warren Dr. National Dingbat Preserve

All right, class. Pop quiz: where is the photo below from? A) North Hollywood, or B) San Francisco?

If you answered B), you're correct.  If you answered A), don't be ashamed. It's actually pretty difficult to tell, isn't it? Behold the Warren Drive National Dingbat Preserve, situated beneath the shadow of Mt. Sutro.  After all, San Francisco puts its worst housing up on high, for all to see and very much not enjoy.

This block-long collection of miserable midcentury buildings are of course not Dingbats per se given their mass, but they draw upon the same architectural idioms. Note the ubiquitous bland beige-yellow stucco exterior cladding, the cheap single-pane horizontal-sash windows, the overall monotony of the design. The regional adaptation--doors on the carports, window fire escapes, the lack of cheap frills, palm trees and failed actors--give these buildings away as distinctly San Francisco in origin. Walk a bit further down toward the second building on the left:

Notice the wrought iron features on the upper left and right quadrants of this otherwise spackled, water-stained facade? They are big 'S' characters within an iron diamond. Not sure what they stand for, but "shitty" and "stupid" come to mind. I also non-enjoy the twisted, ratty topiary on the left, don't you? But enough of these buildings. What's across the street?

Aah yes, the buildings on the other side sport that brilliant innovation: the courtyard with exterior galleries for accessing the apartments. This way you can easily see and hear your neighbors' comings and goings, domestic disputes and what they watch on TV simply by gazing through your single-pane horizontal sash windows. Not that the thin walls of my 90-year old dwelling hide noises from other apartments, but at least I don't get looked in on all the time. 

Particularly noteworthy in this building is the fact that the courtyard itself is not designed for people. It's for the cars. In other words, be careful entering and exiting this common space on foot because you might get mauled by your neighbor's black Honda in the process. The set of three or four of these courtyard buildings on Warren Drive are virtually identical. How did the architect(s) decide to make them distinguishable? Via use of yet another midcentury trope: painted wooden latticework affixed to the exterior stairwells.

The effect really isn't all that bad, mainly because these specimens are well-maintained. Nonetheless, one can hardly consider this sort of thing craftsmanship or particularly good design. As it is, this decoration serves utterly no function. It barely promotes privacy, isn't structurally integral to the building, and really doesn't contribute to the overall form. If Modernist canon dictates that decoration is subordinate to functionality, then these lattices represent a true contempt for decoration, reduced to a truly non-functional, non-integrated and superfluous status relative to the rest of the structure.



 

Dingbat Still-Life

Like a Tyrannosaurus stalking its prey, so to does Sutro Tower bide its time, waiting to feed upon this dull, heedless modern house.

Bad Renovation, vol. 1

There were two things of note I have seen recently on Stanyan Street. First was a cart fashioned out of a ski pod (the kind that normally is affixed to the roof rack of a car) with wheels and a handle taken from a kids' Radio Flyer wagon. This cart belongs to one of the handier denizens of Golden Gate Park, and it makes a secure place to keep his belongings, and allows him to move his stuff with ease when he isn't listening to Phish and/or Rush Limbaugh (makes me think he lives in the park for a reason) on his portable stereo.

Today I came upon the second thing: what used to be a Victorian-style San Francisco house. People's Exhibit A, Your Honor:

 Yikes! A flat, boring facade stripped of all ornament save for two metal rhombuses. A nonsensical arrangement of windows (though the upper floor does exhibit at least some symmetry) that are undoubtedly smaller than would have been originally installed, perhaps suggesting that the renovation worked from the inside out, with the exterior of the building considered secondary to whatever was supposed to be done inside. No attempt to match materials coloring to historical (or even current neighborhood) norms.  How do I know this isn't just a poorly-concieved modernist shite-cube and not a former historic ediface? Just check the side.  People's Exhibit B:

There, peeking out from the side is an original portion of the house that was not sawed off and renovated away. Just so every observant soul will pass this place and note what a dumb refit this is. Somehow I've managed not to notice this horrible grey guano-box of a building despite passing it for years. I wish I hadn't noticed it today. It's an exterior done on the cheap, and with no thought. I could think of ten ways this building could've been better done and probably without breaking the bank.

The (Other) Painted Ladies of Alamo Square (R.I.P.)

It seems that time has at last caught up with the ugly Monochrome Crack-Whores of Alamo Square. A recent visit found nothing but a gaping empty lot where those unfortunate modern wooden poop-shacks used to squat:

Rest in pieces.

It's fall in San Francisco...

Both the real one, and the toy one:

 
Also, shitty architecture abounds in both versions, like the craptastic mini houses in the foreground off of toy 14th Avenue.

Toy San Francisco could really use an ill-tempered 3-year old to knock some of 'em down.

 

Arson and the Unanticipated Consequences of Dingbat Architecture

Recently, a rash of serial arson has attracted the notice and consternation of nearly everyone in the Los Angeles metro area, as well as this blog.  A fiery weekend in which over 50 instances of cars intentionally being set ablaze (dubbed 'carson' by some) in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley may at last be at an end, with a suspect presently facing arson/carson charges. Fortunately no fatalities seem to have resulted from this arson spree.

Not surprisingly, many of these cars were set ablaze while sitting in the open carports of Dingbats. 

These events highlight an unfortunate intersection between architecture and crime, as well as architecture and personal safety.  Moreover, I think these intersections highlight exactly why Dingbat-style architecture is ultimately a deficient building form.

When I lived in Chicago, most peoples' cars were either parked on the street or in detached garages accessed from alleys.  The garages had overhead doors, which when closed generally prevented folks in the alley from seeing what was inside, or at least making it slightly harder for them to do so.  Even in San Francisco, where I now live, the first-level parking stories are mostly protected by overhead doors. 

A Dingbat carport offers no such luxury.  There is either a car there or there is not, and this is immediately evident to the eye of passersby.  If an arsonist, car thief or vandal decides to make an evening of trouble for folks' automobiles, cars in open carports are certainly more self-evident and accessible targets. There is no respective physical or psychological barriers of a door to break through or the mystery of whether there is even a car behind the door to get at.

Admittedly, I didn't think much about anyone monkeying with my car when I parked it in the open carports of the Dingbats I inhabited. People in Los Angeles are likely much more aware of it now, thanks to this rash of fires.

The second issue the arson spree raises is one of safety. Have a look at the Dingbat below:

Given most Dingbat parking involves stacked cars, the residents of that first-level apartment might be sitting above eight vehicles and about 90 gallons of gasoline assuming all the cars had full tanks. 

If one of these cars or something in the carport catches or is set on fire,  the apartment(s) directly above will be damaged. If not by fire and heat spreading up through windows and walls or by firefighters knocking holes in the exterior/interior checking for fire, then the damage will be caused by the smoke it generates: you know, the copious amounts of burning-rubber-and-gasoline type of smoke car fires make.  It doesn't matter whether the fire department knocks down the fire ten minutes after it's reported.  Dingbat car fire = building damage. This was strikingly obvious to the residents of at least one apartment situated directly above a flaming carport during the arson spree.  Were the cars situated in an alley garage or on the street, the dwelling would remain untouched.

The same goes for any building with ground-floor parking levels.  In San Francisco, I live in a small apartment house with a bunker-like garage level.  I wouldn't want a fire happening in there, be it from a car or some other means. It would probably become very hot and very damaging very quickly.

Truly good building design must satisfy not only aesthetic and functional aims, but also must address the safety of residents and their possessions. As fires in parked cars, intentional or otherwise, underneath residential buildings are not particularly common (unlike kitchen fires), it is no small wonder that there little demand to alter how buildings are made to separate living spaces on a particular lot from a utility like car storage, whereas there is much demand to address the dearth of parking in a place like L.A. (of course, there hasn't been much interest in outdoor kitchens, either).  
 
Ultimately, Dingbats are a response to the urban environment and building codes in which they exist.  The development of building codes or city plans that encourage or require the construction of car parking within the footprint of small apartment houses has been the practice of a number of cities, including Los Angeles, where density and design results in too many cars and not enough street or alley space to park them. However, mandating that several large, potentially explosive objects be placed in the lower level of a building is, in my view, may not be the optimal means of addressing this issue given the weekend's mayhem. Thus, if our buildings are truly to be designed well, we must consider whether our cities and laws will allow them to be designed that way.


It is my hope that this unfortunate and costly incident might serve as a catalyst for opening that conversation.