· Nathan Marsak · 3 min read
The Fairfax Must Fall!
849 North Detroit is a 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival home built by Mrs. Catherine Mason — one of the little houses that lends the Fairfax district its grace and charm. Emphasis on 'stood.'
Out in the Fairfax (though so close to West Hollywood you might call it West Hollywood) there’s an abundance of little homes, many of them 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival, which lend the area such grace and charm it’s hard not to smile when strolling the sidewalk.
Take, for example, this home at 849 N. Detroit built by Mrs. Catherine Mason in 1928.
Mason hired Jules George Koppel (1882-1952), the Latvian-born architect best known for his Art Deco Green Dog & Cat Hospital . Other notable works of Koppel’s include a gaggle of Mediterranean Revival fourplexes around the ‘hood, e.g. 333 N. Curson, 414-418 N. Curson, 444-448 N. Sierra Bonita, etc.:
So anyway, if little red-tiled houses give you a spring in your step, then wipe that smile off your face and prepare to trudge head down, staring at the pavement.
Just today, September 12, Stephane Ohayon of Opus One filed to demolish Catherine Mason’s little house on Detroit.
Here’s one of Ohayon’s projects—3906 Huron Avenue, Culver City—so his replacing the little house with four three-story buildings will probably look like this. If you’re lucky.
Lawns and trees? Bad. Living at what looks like hospice care in futuristic Norilsk? Good.
Between these two pictures of 849, you might have noticed something.
No, I mean notice something besides the owner replacing the lawn and banana palms with xeriscape.
Uh-huh, you may have noted that thing off to 849’s north—
That’s right! Engulfing of little houses has already begun, creeping like a cancer, whose metastasis shall spread until it kills the host!
The house on the left—the former 853 N. Detroit—was built in 1924, its architect Jacob Napthali Rosenthal. Its neighbor at the corner, 859 N. Detroit, was built in 1925 by owner-contractor Allan Ramsay Reid.
The two homes were replaced by ten luxury townhomes (designed by the aggressively dreary Modative), where now a 1750sf unit rents for $7000/mo. Phew! Good thing we’ve finally taken care of this damn housing crisis. And hey look, plastic grass! It’s green! (Well, literally green, not the way you’re thinking.)
So don’t worry citizen, soon Los Angeles will be covered by the same “gray boxes with those annoyingly asymmetrical windows” as any other overbuilt soulless wasteland, but at least take solace knowing we lost the greatest amount of beauty, which means your time here will be all the more bitterly ironic. And that’s something, right?
