Normandie Heights in the Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1997

The Stucco Wars: an Easy Fix or Eyesore?


COLUMN ONE Plastering of vintage bungalows sparks clashes between preservationists and struggling home buyers trying to cut maintenance costs.

October 04, 1997
JESUS SANCHEZ
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Dale Trader's heart sank when he looked across his shady Pasadena street one day and spotted workers wrapping a classic California bungalow in layers of chicken wire and thick, black tar paper.




Another house was about to be stuccoed.



Trader rushed across the street to dissuade his neighbors from covering their home's wood siding. "It's a shame you are doing that," he told the Vietnamese-born couple, who listened politely before allowing workers to smear a layer of stucco over their 80-year-old cottage.



"We lost another [house]," Trader said later in an interview, "and it's probably not ever going to be brought back."




The exchange between Trader--a film executive as well as a preservation activist--and his neighbors on Rio Grande Avenue is only one minor tiff in a much broader conflict being waged in older neighborhoods across metropolitan Los Angeles.



Here in these mostly working-class enclaves, passionate preservationists are clashing with a rising number of lower-income immigrant home buyers. At issue is the area's dwindling inventory of Craftsman-style bungalows and Victorian cottages--humble abodes that offered an earlier generation a chance to live in single-family homes on a scale never before seen in this country.



Today, sheathed in redwood siding and shingles, these architectural relics stand out in a Southern California landscape awash in stuccoed tract homes and mini-malls. But the upkeep can be so costly that stucco is seen as a good way to cut down on maintenance expenses.



In some ways the struggle against stucco echoes the battles waged decades ago in eastern cities over the installation of aluminum and vinyl siding over old brick houses--a covering widely derided as declasse.



Stuccoing is "a tremendous atrocity," said Rafael Garcia, who has spent nearly 40 years trying to save turn-of-the-century Victorian-style homes near USC. "I hate people who stucco."



Although there is no accurate record of how many bungalows in metropolitan Los Angeles have been stuccoed, preservationists believe that the number runs in the thousands. Local building permits are required to stucco a house, but approvals are granted routinely.



As a result, preservationists and their allies have launched concerted efforts to save neighborhoods from the stucco make-overs.



They have distributed bilingual brochures titled "Deberia Emplastar Mi Casa de Madera?" (Should I Stucco My Wood House?) in the heavily Latino neighborhoods of Highland Park, Pasadena and Long Beach.



Their answer: an emphatic "No" in both languages. Instead, the brochure says that a properly maintained house with wood siding will look better and sell for more money than one that has been stuccoed.



The anti-stucco campaign has also illuminated--and in some cases magnified--the differences in race, culture and class that cut across many Southern California communities. The demands of upper- and middle-class residents to preserve old homes often comes across as condescending and meddlesome to many immigrant homeowners.


"How do you expect them to bring [older homes] back to life when they don't have the cash?" said Robert Silva, office manager for Las Casas Realty, which sells many homes to Latino immigrants in Highland Park and South-Central Los Angeles. "It takes money to restore these homes."




Old homes have been stuccoed for decades by different groups of people, but the issue has come to a head in recent years as one by-product of the influx of Latino and Southeast Asian immigrants into the Southern California housing market. Plunging prices during the recession made homes far more affordable, and immigrants could find old, two-bedroom homes for under $80,000.



Most of these homes, quite modest in size and design, have little chance of ever being designated historic landmarks. However, some architectural historians argue that they create a unique historic environment and ambience worthy of protecting when clustered in communities such as Echo Park, Angelino Heights and South-Central Los Angeles.



Built by the scores of thousands, mostly before the Depression, these bungalows and cottages permitted people of modest means to own a single-family home, according to architectural historians.



Factory workers could afford a tiny version of a Colonial-style house--complete with Roman-style columns on the front porch and arched windows over the front door--in South-Central for as little as $500 down.



"That's what set Los Angeles apart," said Christy McAvoy, managing partner of the Historic Resources Group, an architectural preservation firm. "Working-class people [in other major cities] didn't have the opportunity to have their single-family house" on such a large scale.

Normandie Heights Neighbors in the News - Mrs. Shatford and son Tom on the front page of the Pasadena Star News, 7/24/2008!

I neglected to put this on the Normandie Heights Neighborhood Website back in 2008.  Better late than never, since our next Normandie Heights Block Party is set for Tuesday Evening, August 7, 2012, from 6 to 9 p.m. and Mrs Shatford is sure to attend.  Please be sure to come out and meet your neighbors on the National Night Out......

Friday, July 25, 2008 9:13 AM


Subject: Normandie Heights Neighbors In the News - Mrs. Shatford and son Tom on the front page!



Mrs. Shatford has lived in Normandie Heights longer than any other neighbor and has many stories to tell! The library at PCC is named after her husband, a longtime trustee of PCC and one of Pasadena's greatest public servants. Here is the link http://www.pasadena.edu/about/libHistory/part2/nineties.cfm

We are very happy to have such distinguished neighbors in our midst. Say hello to Mrs. Shatford and her son at our next block party, as they usually attend.



If you have stories to share about Normandie Heights, please reply to this email.







Trickling down

Gas prices dropping at area stations

By Thomas Himes, Correspondent

Article Launched: 07/24/2008 11:16:44 PM PDT



Tom and Sara Shatford of Pasadena pump gas as fuel as dropped under four dollars a gallon at the Fastop gas station on Washington Blvd on Thursday July 24, 2008, in Pasadena. (Staff Photo by Keith Birmingham)


NORMANDIE HEIGHTS LANDMARK DISTRICT


FOUNDED 1907 & 1994


Block party


Tuesday, 6 to 9 p.m.


August 7th, 2012


In lisa’s yard, 587 rio grande st.


Pot luck – bring a dish or a dessert or just yourself on National night out


All normandie heights residents welcome