Photo courtesy David Scott / Little Landers Historical Society

A postcard of the detention center

L.A.'s Cultural Heritage Commission met at City Hall Thursday morning to determine whether to designate Tujunga's Verdugo Hills Golf Course a historic-cultural monument, not because it's a golf course, but because it was the site of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, Immigration, and Naturalization Service -- a World War II internment camp where 90 percent of the detainees were Japanese.

But the Los Angeles Department of City Planning's Staff of Historic Resources recommended against the designation, precisely because the site is now a golf course -- and has been one for more than 50 years. And the Commission agreed.

A group of passionate speakers voiced their support for historic designation, including Japanese-Americans with personal ties to the site, and David Scott, whose grandfather, Merrill H. Scott, was a guard at the internment camp. They were just a few of the representatives from the community who have been trying to preserve the golf course after Snowball West Investments bought the property in 2004 for over $7,500,000, with plans to turn it into a housing development.

It's been a complicated and contentious debate for both those in favor and against historical designation, but at least everyone agreed on one thing: the site is very rich in history.

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Flickr User jericl cat

Familiar to anyone who drives the 110 near Exposition Park, the recently altered Felix the Cat neon sign at Felix Chevrolet has become the focus of preservationist ire after owners replaced its neon lights with LEDs.

Says a letter from Los Angeles historian and preservationist Kim Cooper, who is circulating an online petition to save the sign:

The cold, thin light of LEDs is a pale imitation of the beautiful natural gas glow of neon -- the neon which made this sign historic, unique and beloved by Angelenoes.

The sign was very nearly designated a historic-cultural monument by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 2007, but the designation was thwarted by objections of Felix Chevrolet's owners and of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilwoman Jan Perry, who argued that the designation would inhibit business growth in the area.

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Diane Meyer

Los Angeles specializes in its own brand of architectural amnesia. We like to level Craftsman neighborhoods in favor of freeways and bulldoze stately Victorians in the name of "urban redevelopment." But artist Diane Meyer wants to restore the city's collective memory of our built environment -- and she plans to do it with a squashed penny.

Meyer first had the idea to memorialize demolished neighborhoods in 2009, while producing her project Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-less Angelenos Tell Stories of Living in L.A.. As she photographed 100 Angelenos without autos, Meyer herself surrendered her car and started walking, biking and relying on public transit. And she found herself craving more history of the streets where she ventured.

"It makes you slow down and think about where you are. You can process places in a different way when you're not speeding past them," she says. "I realized that I took things like the freeways for granted. You don't really think about the fact that they've displaced something that was once there."

She began discovering places like the Bradbury Mansion, a gargantuan Queen Anne mansion built downtown in 1887, where Civic Park is currently being constructed. With the help of a penny-pressing machine -- yes, the same machine you might find at a cheesy roadside attraction -- she's turning L.A.'s erased environments into souvenirs. It's a project she calls, appropriately, Flattened Los Angeles.

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Wendy Gilmartin

The building that housed the LAPD's headquarters between 1955 and 2009 starred in TV shows like Dragnet in its heyday, but its slow, 50-year slide into disrepair gave it a real-world stigma that's left it tarnished and crumbling from the inside out -- most obviously because the community doesn't care to defend it.

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Tanja M. Laden

Wilshire Boulevard Temple

If you've ever cruised along Wilshire Boulevard between Western and Vermont, you've probably noticed a massive, domed structure at Hobart Avenue, kitty-corner to an indoor golf driving-range. That building is the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, aka the Best Jewish Reform Synagogue Built by Hollywood, according to our 2011 Best of L.A. issue.

You might have also noticed that, these days, the temple is covered in scaffolding -- signs the 1929 landmark is in the middle of a multimillion-dollar renovation. The large-scale extended project includes a cleaning and restoration of the Warner Murals, commissioned by none other than Jack, Harry and Albert Warner, otherwise known as the Warner Bros. The artist, Hugo Ballin, would have been a whopping 133 years old today, so what better time to revisit his work than the present?

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Marissa Gluck

L.A. Times cartoonist Paul Conrad's Chain Reaction sculpture from 1991

A controversy has been bubbling over Paul Conrad's anti-nuclear war sculpture in Santa Monica, Chain Reaction, and the latest fallout may spell the end of the 26-foot tall mushroom cloud near the city's Civic Center.

With the deterioration of the steel, fiberglass and copper sculpture, mostly due to the sea air and sun, Santa Monica's Arts Commission and Public Art Committee have recommended the city deaccession the five-and-a-half-ton piece rather than attempt to preserve it. Citing public-safety concerns, the city erected a temporary fence around the sculpture in June.

Installed in 1991, the sculpture was a gift to the city by the artist, paid for by an anonymous donor for $250,000. It was supposed to have been made of bronze, which tends to require little maintenance and resists the elements over time. Instead, the piece was constructed with a stainless steel internal frame, a Fiberglas core and copper tubing for the chain links.

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Tony DeLap, "The Big Wave," 1989 Stainless steel, Plexiglas sculpture. Wilshire Boulevard at Franklin

It's been over 20 years since artist Tony DeLap built one of the first public artworks in Santa Monica. The Big Wave, an arching sculpture greeting visitors to the city's gateway on Wilshire Boulevard, had suffered greatly in its first two decades from rust and deterioration. Last year, restoration work was completed that not only repaired the corrosive effects of the sea air but also added a new LED lighting system.

While DeLap's iconic sculpture was saved, public art in Los Angeles and its surrounding cities confronts many potential causes of deterioration. In addition to the damage caused by wind, sun and rain (not to mention animals, birds and the occasional errant driver), there is also the problem of dwindling funds for a growing and maturing public art collection. The recent slowdown in real estate development also has meant less capital to create and conserve public art, which traditionally has been funded through "Percent for Art" programs.

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