CommentsPRESERVATION POLITICS-Well, now that you’ve read about the Lytton Savings building at Crescent Heights and Sunset -- and its placement on the City’s “historical register” -- maybe you’d be surprised to find that there’s another “1960s Lytton Savings” worthy of saving. It’s an orphan of a building in Van Nuys at 6569 Van Nuys Blvd. and it has an equal but different story to tell.
A tale of two buildings, a tale of two different cities: a trendy Los Angeles versus its distant relative, the San Fernando Valley. It’s a tale of community disinterest, proof that even the professionals will “sell out” buildings in the suburbs over a building on Sunset Blvd. It’s a tale revealing that “preservation is a dirty word north of Mulholland Drive.”
Photos of both the Crescent Heights “Lytton Savings” and the Van Nuys “Lytton Savings” show a great similarity, a love of modern architecture by Bart Lytton, one of those l960s savings and loan tycoons who pyramided the building of the suburbs into a chain of S&Ls. He had a stylebook but he wasn’t building those Home Savings structures that look like mausoleums (I’m surprised no one ever put their ashes into a safe deposit box at Home.) Lytton, a benefactor of the County Museum of Art, used clean modern lines and had a “stylebook” for his banks, but over past 50 years, they’ve disappeared. Maybe you can find one more but, to my knowledge, only the “honored” Crescent Heights and the “soon to be trashed” Van Nuys buildings remain.
As a member of the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council, I grew up in Van Nuys admiring the Lytton Savings building. There were only two well designed buildings in Van Nuys: the Paul Revere Williams Bank of America, and next door, the Lytton Savings building with its 40 foot high atrium, skylights, a floating staircase and the loan department suspended on a balcony under the atrium. Yes, like the friends of the Crescent Heights bank, I had my $12 there 50 years ago; I’ve also had a love affair with the building ever since.
But as a Van Nuys Neighborhood Council member, I’ve never seen the Crescent Heights Lytton Savings and that’s where a bureaucratic story begins.
When I tried to discuss nominating the Van Nuys Lytton building for “landmark status,” I found that, like the Crescent Heights building, it is subject to demolition -- immediately.
PROPOSITION M seems to be bringing a land rush to tired Van Nuys Blvd. where most storefronts date from the l920s. Talk about a light rail on Van Nuys Blvd means that everything is in play. And because the Lytton building had parking, four stories with 200 units can be built there. There’s such a land rush now with 400 units at the corner of Kittridge and Van Nuys -- that very same corner.
As a member of the Van Nuys NC Plum Committee, I tried to talk up the building, but was “blackballed” from the committee. “Thank you for your interest in preservation. (You’re now off the committee.”)
The fine art of the building isn’t worthy of discussion, but there is talk about the struggling Salvadoran market, La Tapatulcheca (photo above), now occupying it, and that the illegal vendors the market encourages bring the “wrong look” to Van Nuys. Instead, there are wild hopes of gentrification and a “SPROUTS” that will never sprout here. If you think that’s funny, you should feel what I felt when I pursued the matter. The “Lytton Savings” in Van Nuys is on the City of Los Angeles’ “SURVEY LA” list -- an architectural study project of all the City’s buildings of architectural value, including “orphans” like this one that are worthy of “saving.”
So, ask the City Attorney, “Doesn’t the Neighborhood Council have to at least get a presentation about why the building is on the Survey LA list?” No answer.
Ask Ken Bernstein, City Historical Preservation Officer, “Won’t you defend your SURVEY LA list of buildings of interest or concern?” No answer.
Ask LA Conservancy for their help and you hardly get encouragement because the Crescent Heights “fight” seems more interesting. Perhaps “saving two of a kind” is just so difficult to explain that they won’t even “come over the hill” to defend my advocacy -- or SURVEY LA -- or even tell me about their Crescent Heights battle.
I wish the Crescent Heights people well. I think their building is worthy of preservation, as I do the Van Nuys building. It’s the rare situation where “preserving two of a kind” over one of a kind makes sense. I’d welcome synergy between the groups.
But the success (such as it is) in Crescent Heights troubles me. I’ve been given a view of City politics suggesting that there is a different threshold for honest discussion of preservation in the City. One cynically sees some sense that the Crescent Heights battle is as much about those Hollywood-Beverly Hills types riding down Sunset Blvd. in a top down convertible, either celebrating the Gehry building to come or the Lytton Savings to be “saved.”
But if you try, as I did, to get the City’s million dollar “SURVEY LA” discussion of the building inserted into the Van Nuys NC record, you’ll find that you can’t. The City acts as if their own “SURVEY LA” guidance is a “secret” -- a bureaucratic secret for their own convenience. It’s their secret and they’ll decide when and if they want to use it.
And as for discussion in the Valley on preservation issues -- those who built out the Valley with single family homes in the l950s will build out the Valley now with four story apartments. (Even my single family home sanctuary is being surrounded by those 4 story apartments.) When you can’t get your neighborhood council to respect you enough to make the preservation presentation, you’re not in a good place.
(John Hendry is a neighborhood council activist who lives in the San Fernando Valley.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
There are Two Lytton Savings Buildings Worth Saving! Why is Only One Getting any Ink?
