ENDANGERED BUILDINGS CONT'D
Janes House
Located at 6541 Hollywood Boulevard, the house is survivor of the era when Hollywood was an actual city. Built in 1903 the house was one of the first model houses built on the Boulevard. From 1911 to 1926 it served as the Misses Janes School of Hollywood. The last Janes sister died in 1983, and the house has gone through several incarnations from the centerpiece of a shopping arcade to a trendy restaurant. Today the house is unoccupied and obscured from view, with its future uncertain. Recent plans involve an upscale boutique hotel and there are reports of unauthorized work taking place at the house, which could potentially damage historic interior features.
Wattles Mansion and Gardens
Since the departure of Hollywood Heritage in 2009, the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks has managed the house and it has remained closed to the public. While the department has always had plans to reopen the house for weddings and parties and was even allocated Quimby Act funds towards the restoration of the gardens, no work other than the erection of more security fencing has occurred. Left unoccupied and unused, Wattles future remains unclear.
Warner Pacific Theater
This grand Italianate Beaux Arts movie palace, designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, opened in 1928. It is the last of Hollywood's great movie theaters to remain underutilized and unrestored. Although its offices are still rented and an evangelical group uses the auditorium on Sundays, the theater has remained closed to movie and theater audiences since 1994 after suffering some damage during the Northridge Earthquake. While it is a Historic Cultural Landmark, plans of office towers rising in the lot behind the theater continue to circulate as its neglected façade casts a shadow over the Boulevard. Its issues are further highlighted by the fate and condition of other “lost” theaters along the boulevard, the Fox, the Vogue and the Hawaiian, which have all been radically or insensitively altered for new uses.
Historic Residential Neighborhoods
The recent survey of central Hollywood's historic resources commissioned by the Hollywood Redevelopment Agency as a result of a lawsuit settlement with Hollywood Heritage, brought to light the existence of several intact historic neighborhoods representing various periods and forms of Hollywood's development. These small districts have been eroded over the decades and represent the last of Hollywood's residential communities dating from the first half of the twentieth century. To date, the new survey has not been approved by CRA/LA, nor are there any official boundaries or recognition of these communities by the Planning Department, increasing the risk of further incompatible infill and demolitions.