SANCTUARIES LA EXPLORES THE QUIETER SIDE OF LOS ANGELES THROUGH DESIGN.
ROOTED IN THE BELIEF THAT SANCTUARY EXISTS EVERYWHERE, OFTEN HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT.
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From the Field is an occasional dispatch — what I saw, what’s worth knowing, and what’s coming up in the city.
Volume 005
This weekend, between the smoke from the Boyle Heights warehouse fire, a coyote going after my fifty-pound dog, and the heat, I found myself questioning whether LA really is a sanctuary. Is the 98% of the time paradise worth the 2% of apocalypse? Yes, I think so. But in the 2%, I start to understand why people say enough and leave.
I spent Sunday in Santa Monica escaping the poor air quality and while I was there I found myself at the Miles Memorial Playhouse for their Summer Solstice celebration. Super cute, wholesome scene filled with live music, lots of kids making forts out of foam blocks, and older couples in zen mode in their matching folding chairs. Maybe the west side isn’t so bad.
GET INVOLVED
Los Angeles has no demolition by neglect ordinance. That means a property owner can let a designated Historic-Cultural Monument sit vacant, refuse maintenance, and watch it deteriorate. And eventually, when the cost of repair is high enough, argue that demolition is the only viable option. The city has almost no mechanism to stop them. Two landmarks are currently in danger of being lost this way.
THE BARRY BUILDING
A 1951 International Style landmark by architect Milton Caughey in Brentwood, once home to the beloved Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstore is another HCM facing demolition by neglect. The heirs of billionaire Charlie Munger, former Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, evicted tenants, let the building sit vacant for a decade, and are now pushing to tear it down with no replacement project planned. Just a vacant lot. The LA Conservancy and Angelenos for Historic Preservation filed a joint lawsuit in May to block the demolition. If this one falls, every other landmark in the city could be on the clock. Sign the petition here.
THE STURGES HOUSE
The LA Conservancy has named Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sturges House the first advocacy priority on their 2026 LA Watch List. It’s a 1939 Brentwood hillside home supervised during construction by a young John Lautner, and the only Usonian home ever built in Southern California. The home is a designated Historic-Cultural Monument but has sat vacant for years under a nonprofit that has repeatedly rebuffed preservation outreach. The cantilevered redwood and brick structure is actively deteriorating. Want to help? Contact Councilmember Traci Park at traci.park@lacity.org and urge the city to require the owner to act before it’s past the point of no return.
The Sturges House interior, photographed ahead of the Los Angeles Modern Auctions sale of the home. Photo: Grant Mudford, 2016. 
Redwood and brick cantilevered over a Brentwood hillside. Designated Historic-Cultural Monument. Vacant. Deteriorating. The owner has rebuffed every preservation outreach. Photo: John Gollings, 1976. The building that leases to Junior's Party Supply — a cornerstone of York Boulevard for 20 years — and Sip Snack was sold to a New York-based private equity company, which gave both tenants 60 days to get out. For Highland Park residents, this is not a new story. It hurts every time. Sign the petition to help Junior's fight to stay, donate to Sip Snack's relocation fund, and if you want to understand why and how private equity is ruining America read this.
UPCOMING
The Lafayette Square Estate Sale is this Saturday, June 27, 8 AM – 3 PM. Ome Dezin will be pulling pieces from storage to sell. Go early. RSVP here for access.
The Sparkletts Bottling Plant passed PLUM on June 9th and is now headed to full City Council tomorrow, June 24. Historic-Cultural Monument designation is looking likely. We’ve been following this one since the beginning and we’re cautiously optimistic. But here’s the update that stings: the second four-acre lot at 4500 York sold for $14.5M to Lift Partners — a San Francisco-based real estate investment firm that specializes in, and I quote, “adaptive reuse and repositioning of industrial and office properties.” The same agent who sold the lot has already put it up for lease through CBRE at $142,000 a month, marketing it as rare M1-zoned industrial land with “direct access to Interstate 5.” No mention of the last active artesian spring in Northeast LA sitting beneath it. No mention of the 1929 Moorish Revival architecture next door. I wish these people had some imagination instead of copy, paste, profit.
WORTH KNOWING
The Lineage Logistics warehouse fire in Boyle Heights has been burning since June 17. A cold storage facility the size of five football fields, 85 million pounds of food spoiling inside, smoke blanketing the Eastside for days. Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency. Mayor Bass declared a local emergency. The Boyle Heights community — one of the most historically underserved in the city — is bearing the brunt of it. If you’re in the area and need resources, relief centers and air purifiers are being distributed. This is the 2%.
The Glendale City Council voted earlier this month to approve the Garden River Bridge — a new pedestrian crossing that will span the LA River at Flower Street and Fairmont Avenue, connecting Glendale to Griffith Park. The bridge is the second phase of Glendale's Riverwalk and will be designed with raised garden beds, shade structures, seating, and viewing areas on both approaches and on the span itself. Olin is handling the landscaping. Construction is expected to take two and a half years. It follows recently completed pedestrian bridges in Atwater Village, Glassell Park, and adjacent to the Glendale-Hyperion complex.
Sunday was the solstice. Under the oculus skylight at the Getty Research Institute, the midday sun aligned with the plaque below — the spot where Andy Goldsworthy once installed a hand-formed clay spiral made from dirt and clay excavated during the Getty’s own construction. The piece cracked as it dried over nine months, deepening into what looked like a desert ridge. Then a burst pipe flooded it. It was decommissioned in 1999, only two years after its completion. The alignment still happens every year, over a metal circular inlay. Worth remembering what was originally there.
The original artwork as through the lens of Andy Goldsworthy himself, photographed by the artist at the opening of the Getty Center in 1997. James Turrell’s 100th and largest museum-housed Skyspace, As Seen Below — The Dome, opened June 19 at ARoS Aarhus in Denmark, timed to the summer solstice. The dome is 16 meters tall and 40 meters wide — roughly the scale of the Pantheon. Visitors descend through an underground corridor before arriving inside a vast domed chamber where a central oculus frames the open sky. Adding to the list. Turrell was born in Los Angeles, if you needed another reason to care.
The oculus at ARoS Aarhus. James Turrell's As Seen Below — The Dome. Photo by: Florian Holzherr, 2026.
Shelby xx
So important thank you for sharing