GEHPC
ACTION ALERT: MORRIS KIGHT’S 4TH STREET HOME
City Council MUST hear from you by June 5th!
Morris Kight’s home on 4th street is threatened with demolition. City Council District 1 refuses to vote for LGBTQ monuments. They’ve given us multiple excuses why they can’t vote on monument status for Morris’ house, while voting yes on other monuments that contradict their excuses.
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BUILDINGS IN OUR LGBTQ HISTORY
Morris Kight lived at 1822 West 4th Street from 1967 to 1974. At this time, a new generation of LGBT political activists were growing with anticipation and rage; born of the conservative homophile movement of the 1950s and the ongoing and escalating police harassment and brutality gays were experiencing. Kight and his colleagues led a profoundly influential gay liberation movement; 1822 West 4th Street was the epicenter of that movement. At his 4th street home, Kight co-founded and co-ran the Los Angeles Chapter of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF/LA), the Christopher Street West (CSW, now CSW Pride) parade, and the Gay Community Services Center (now the Los Angeles LGBT Center). We wrote the Los Angeles HCM nomination.
Morris’ house is written up in these publications:
City Council MUST hear from YOU! Make a public comment here:
Our Projects
We've worked toward preserving residential and commercial sites. We love every one of these buildings. We get to know their histories and stories in our research and get to compile a history never told on each site.
Crenshaw Women’s Center
2021, now a car rental business!
What’s happened so far…
June 29, 2022
Roe V Wade is overturned by the United States Supreme Court.
February 2022
Los Angeles City Council unanimously votes with PLUM’s decision to name the Crenshaw Women’s Center a SITE ONLY designation.
January 2022
After numerous postponements, Los Angeles’ Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUM) voted unanimously to include the Crenshaw Women’s Center on the city’s list of Historic-Cultural Monuments as a SITE ONLY designation.
This decision came after Councilmember Mark Ridley Thomas was indicted months before and the developer refused to work with us regarding any plans in incorporating the building.
When the Councilmember’s district released their decision on only memorializing the building we wrote a letter and never received a response.
We’ve learned that it’s never too late to fight. Urge City Council and District 10 to incorporate the Crenshaw Women’s Center into any future development!
1971, photo courtesy of Carol Downer
A Quick History
During 1970-1972, the Crenshaw Women’s Center was the brick-and-mortar heart of the second wave feminist movement in Los Angeles. It functioned as a safe space for nurturing the autonomy of women and organizing for the second wave of feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Founded by Joan Robins, The Crenshaw Women’s Center at its core provided psychological, job, abortion, and rape counseling; consciousness raising “rap” sessions; women’s liberation classes; a volunteer switchboard; and small bookstore.
Women’s Self-Help One clinic was the first in the nation and consequently placed the Crenshaw Women’s Center at the genesis point of the women’s self-help movement. Founded by Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, the clinic became a model for the national movement. In 1972, the Center was raided by police. Ms. Downer had applied yogurt as a cure for a yeast infection and was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. She was acquitted and the platform and publicity of The Great Yogurt Conspiracy raised the consciousness of the nation and helped make women’s clinics a national movement.
The Lesbian Feminists operated out of the Crenshaw Women’s Center. They facilitated dialogue between straight and lesbian feminists. The act of straight and lesbian feminists working together was extremely profound at the time and it led to the National Organization for Woman changing their platform to include lesbians.
The Anti-Rape Squad was founded by Joan Robins at the Crenshaw Woman’s Center. They used guerilla activist tactics to change attitudes and law about rape. A rape hotline was run out of the Center and women from the Anti-Rape Squad would accompany women to the police station.
In three years, the Crenshaw Women’s Center generated an enormous amount of energy, pivotal change and several firsts for the Women’s Rights Movement and second wave feminism in Los Angeles and the nation.
Want to read our nomination?
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Hint: Our nomination starts on page 33.
KING EDWARD HOTEL, THE KING EDDY SALOON
The King Edward Hotel is one of the most beloved buildings in Los Angeles and we were honored to get the opportunity to submerge ourselves in its history. Designed and built by John Parkinson in 1905, the hotel was Parkinson’s personal homage to his childhood home of Bolton, England and the moors of Rivington. Originally to be named The Rivington, the hotel stayed in the Parkinson’s family until 1962. In the year Prohibition ended, a wine/beer license was filed and granted to The King Edward Grill. The King Eddy Saloon has been providing affordable drink and food along with comradery and continuity to the local community since 1933. We wrote the Los Angeles HCM nomination.
MIRLO GATE LODGE TOWER
Most residents know that quirky, stone building at the top of the hill as you enter the Valmonte neighborhood of Palos Verdes Estates. In 1925, building commissioner, Art Jury member, and architect Clarence E. Howard, presented plans for a “charming” circular tower for the new east entrance. The tower took less than five months to build and is built with old, Irish stone laying methods and Scottish bond bricklaying methods. We wrote the National Register nomination and it was listed in May 2019.
chocolate shop
The Chocolate Shop is like no other interior in Los Angeles. In 1913, the Quinby's hired Plummer & Feil to design a Dutch raadskelder interior in their Chocolate Shop. Pasadena-based, tilemaker Batchelder was hired to tile every surface and create twenty one distinctive cartoons depicting typical old Dutch life. We are currently writing the National Register nomination for this site.
The factory
The Mitchell Camera Corporation designed and manufactured the NC (News Camera) and the silent-running BNC (Blimped News Camera) at this factory, which revolutionized the motion picture industry. Studio One later filled a vital community need: it celebrated sexual freedom for gay men when in the 1970s, dance WAS the revolution. We nominated The Factory to the National Register of Historic Places and won!
dr jones dog and cat hospital
In 1938, the veterinarian to the stars, hired the architectural and design firm Wurdeman, Becket, and Plummer to build a streamline moderne facade to his building, along with additional square footage for his growing veterinarian practice. We researched and wrote all material that was used in the Los Angeles Conservancy lawsuit against the demolition approval by the City of West Hollywood. Unfortunately, the Conservancy lost their lawsuit and the building was demolished in 2019.
sherman bungalows
1902 Sherman was a small, dusty railroad town and these homes were likely built as model homes to show future residents what good life could be in Sherman. This was our first preservation project. We nominated three residential homes to be part of the Old Sherman Thematic Grouping in West Hollywood. Two of the three were designated as Local Cultural Resources.
We love these kinds of places
RESEARCH
Once you hire us, we hit the archives, online resources, and track down anyone who can tell us the history of your property. We've been known to find some great nuggets.
One of our favorites was when we were researching the Dr Jones Dog and Cat Hospital. We were in the race against time; we needed material that would convince the Planning Commission to deny the demolition of the building. Days before the meeting, we went to the Getty Research Institute in search of the flat file called 'Dog.' And there it was - the pencil-drawn plans that were likely rolled and hiked under the arm of Becket himself. We also found promotional photos of the building. Once we presented what we found, we changed the tide and momentum of the barreling train that was this development.
That is why we do what we do.
WRITING
After we have collected everything we need to know about the site, we get to what we like to call - creating the story. Every piece of research we collect fits into the narrative we create for your nomination. What we love about this part is that this will be likely the first time your building will have a complete history written about it.
Our favorite story creation was writing about the Studio One period of significance of The Factory. It was the first time Studio One had been written in detail. We gathered interviews we had done, source material and wove it throughout the time of post-Stonewall and pre-AIDS. Since this period of celebration and of dance is rarely written about, we had to create it. Our National Register nomination is a document that charts the 1970s - 1980s and the rise of the gay entrepreneur, the normalizing of gays in straight culture, the shedding of shame on the dance floor, the tribalism that dance had become for gay men, and the momentum that all of this would bring to forming the first gay city, West Hollywood.
