Historic Preservation

The city of L.A. opened its new Riverside Drive Bridge, featuring a protected bikeway and roundabout. The project was praised for safety improvements, but the oversized project is really about moving more cars even faster.

There has been quite a bit of proverbial water under the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge. Under a great deal of community displeasure in 2013, the city of Los Angeles set aside an outdated bridge retrofit plan and formed an advisory committee to decide the future of the historic span.

An innovative proposal for re-use as a "landbridge" park could not save the Riverside-Figueroa Bridge. A lawsuit could not save it. Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Landmark Number 908 is on its way down.

If you've been to Mariachi Plaza, then you've seen the beautiful Boyle Hotel, or Hotel Mariachi, as it is known to many, that sits on the corner of 1st and Boyle.

(Yesterday, a new advertisement appeared in our sidebar advertising a public meeting on the North Spring Street Bridge Improvement project on Tuesday, May 10, at 6:00 P.M. at the Lincoln Heights Senior Citizen Center at 2323 Workman Avenue.  Below is a summary of the project, most of which was written before the advertisement was placed. - DN)

The National Trust For Historic Preservation announced last week that it would be creating a fund dedicated to supporting historic preservation projects across Los Angeles County. For those of us who work tirelessly to dispel the myth that preservation is the domain of grey-haired old ladies and the historic house museums they love; it seems like a fantastic opportunity to once again point out the many links between preserving historic structures and neighborhoods and increasing the pedestrian, cyclist, and transit-rider friendliness of our communities.