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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PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHELBY NICO DIAMOND
When I moved to Highland Park in 2019, The York Manor was one of the first buildings that caught my attention. Sitting just before the main stretch of businesses on York Boulevard, the former church seemed to be trying on different lives.
Over the years, I knew it as an event venue, a place for sound baths, and a basement speakeasy hosting comedy nights. At one point, there were soccer jerseys for sale upstairs and games screening below. I kept wondering what would stick.
Then Meadow moved in.
I’d first noticed Meadow at its former Study Hall space farther down York, near the old Sip Snack location. A neighborhood coworking space felt like something worth rooting for: somewhere to work close to home, with familiar faces and a little personality. At The York Manor, that idea had room to grow. By day, people settled in with their laptops. On evenings and weekends, the building filled with weddings, readings, markets, and gatherings.
For several months, I was one of those people with a laptop. Some of the earliest ideas for Sanctuaries LA took shape here, followed by an early website before I moved the publication to Substack. I also hosted a screening of Eve Van Dyke’s New York Times Op-Doc, The Loneliest Crash Test Dummy in the space. The building became part of my working life — not just somewhere I passed and wondered about.
More recently, during an LA Conservancy preservation bootcamp, I learned that The York Manor was the only Historic-Cultural Monument in the immediate area. Having spent so much time here, I wanted to understand this part of its story, too — and how Meadow was giving an old building a new place in the neighborhood’s daily life.
