Lyman Village Apartments, where Oscar could have lived

What if an apartment building were styled after Marilyn Monroe? Rudolph Valentino? Cecil B. DeMille? Designer Gene Bramson tackled the task, transforming eight 1948 and three 1928 apartment buildings along Los Feliz's Lyman Place into a renter's walk of fame.

“This building, it just spoke to me,” said Bramson, parking his 1981 DeLorean to tour the block-long Lyman Village Apartments. He gestured to the Monroe building, clad in delicate shades of pink and fronted by a wooden “The Monroe” sign with a lattice work base, patterned after 1940s billboards.

“I know it sounds nutty, but buildings do talk to me. They tell me what needs to be done,” said Bramson, whose firm, Bramson & Associates, oversaw the design of the 74,000-square-foot Holmby Hills estate built for Aaron and Candy Spelling.

The Spelling manor no doubt spoke to Bramson in louder registers; the Lyman Village Apartments clearly communicated in dulcet tones. Except for obvious signage, each building sports a sleight of hand design that speaks subtly of the stars: Bogart, Pickford, Harlow, Fairbanks, Gable, Cagney, Mansfield and more.

Curiosity for Rent: '80s Pop in Koreatown

At first glance, the playful apartment building, above, in Los Angeles' Koreatown seems a ripoff of Stephen Kanner’s award-winning 1992 Harvard Apartments, below, about a half-mile southeast. But the 16-unit building above was originally built in 1957, the year the Russians launched Sputnik. How is that possible?

“We basically put a whole new face on the building,” said Stan Davis, owner of the apartments at 686 S. St. Andrews Place. He said it was his idea to remake the building like the Harvard. Davis had commissioned Stephen Kanner to design the Harvard Apartments in 1992, and shortly thereafter Davis hired the architect to redesign what he described as the Dingbat-style "drab '50s building" bought in the mid-1980s.

Compared side by side, the two buildings are similar, punched with circular windows and boxed on both ends with sloped faces. The Harvard, built from the ground up, is a more masterful design. Even Winston Chappell, vice president of Santa Monica-based Kanner Architects, thought the second building seemed a bit “awkward.” But he added that Kanner, who died of cancer in 2010, had been working within the limitations of an existing building, a dour one at that.

“Stephen clearly didn’t want to remove the wall bangers,” Chappell said, referring to the air conditioning units. “At first it looked like someone had done a riff on the Harvard. People do that all the time.”

Curiosity for Rent: Hopi bungalows in Echo Park

Ronald Atwater stands in the Hopi Village, a dream his grandfather realized back in the 1930s. With his bear paw hand, Atwater lists eight properties built by his grandfather, H. Gale Atwater, and his father, Eugene Atwater, along Avon Park Terrace in Echo Park.

The best known are two Pueblo Revival properties with Mayan flourishes, designed by Robert Stacy-Judd, an architect known for exotic designs that cashed in on the Meso-American craze in the late 1920s. The three-bedroom rentals at 1431 and 1433 Avon Park Terrace stand fortress-like with massive wooden drain spouts, rough-hewn timber and thick, irregular-edged adobe parapets. Trim is painted bright orange and aqua.

“Those two buildings were way over budget and a disaster financially for my grandfather,” Ronald says with an easy, full laugh, the 71-year-old's mop of hair still thick and blond. “They were finished in 1931, a year that was also a national disaster.”

Curiosity for Rent: Snow White cottages in Los Feliz

Updated: See note at the bottom of the post for details about neighborhood names.

When Sylvia Helfert considered buying eight storybook cottages in 1976, her friends said she was crazy to spend so much money on old pieces of junk. Newly divorced in her 50s and pressed for cash, Helfert gambled and offered $140,000 for the 1931 Los Feliz property that Roque & Mark Real Estate had listed for $160,000.

“In five minutes they accepted,” said Helfert, 91, a longtime Marina del Rey resident. “It was the first thing I ever owned by myself.”

Turn the historic pages of Los Angeles’ storybook style architecture and you’ll discover -- appropriately enough -- stories. Here are a few behind Helfert’s property in the 2900 block of Griffith Park Boulevard, designed by Ben Sherwood and called the Snow White cottages or the Seven Dwarfs cottages by locals:

1. Storybook roofs can be insured (sometimes).

True to the storybook style, which weaves a fairy tale spell over Tudor and French Normandy architecture, the roofs of Helfert’s buildings looked like they were built by drunken elves. “I couldn’t get anyone to insure the buildings because the roofs looked like they’re falling apart,” said Helfert, the property’s third owner. “Safeco refused me, but then I got a call from their president. He apologized.” The executive explained that as a boy living nearby, he watched workers break the shingles, singe the edges and place them in a random pattern, Helfert said. The insurance executive said the roofs were in excellent condition, so Helfert could get a policy after all.

Curiosity for Rent: An Arabian tent in East Hollywood

After living with a relative for years, Teresa Garcia decided she and her family needed their own space. “She was determined,” said her husband, Martin Garcia. The couple arrived in the U.S. from Oaxaca, Mexico, 11 years ago. Upon finding a studio for rent at 544 N. Heliotrope Drive in East Hollywood, Teresa told her husband, “It’s a castle! I found a castle!” The couple’s daughter, Kimberly, saw the building and declared it the Princess Castle.

To others, the 1924 property looks a bit like an Arabian tent. The 20-unit building attracts considerable attention, perched on the route of CicLAvia, an occasional event when streets are closed to make way for pedestrians and bicyclists.

“People bike by, stop and take pictures all the time,” said building manager Miguel Hernandez, a three-year tenant who lives with his wife, Judith, and 7-year-old daughter, Michel, right.

The building’s face presents Egyptian and Moorish architectural details, including a winged sun disk in relief over the front door, used as an address marker.

Curiosity for Rent: Ternary apartments in Hollywood Hills

A Moorish castle with California Spanish overtones stands at 6205 Temple Hill Drive, seemingly well guarded by a locked gate. This 1915 complex, now a six-unit apartment building, was the site of mystic gatherings and ritual performances, but the biggest secret right now?  Getting past that gate.

Passage, however, was simple during a Sunday visit. The gate was ajar, affording photos of the courtyard. Tenants in this upscale rental, called the Ternary and originally built by the Theosophical Society’s Krotona branch, remained sequestered, unlike the more bohemian Krotona apartments a short distance away.

The Krotona colony sought to build utopia in the Hollywood Hills from 1912 until 1924, when the sect moved to Ojai. The Ternary property (from the Latin ternarius, meaning three at once) includes three structures joined by arches and set with a rectangular courtyard framed by 10 towering Italian cypress.   

The views, the light and the divine quiet seemed a good match for the $1,645 a month rent for a one-bedroom unit. The entrance to the north wing has double wooden doors set within a pillared canopy and framed with tiles by Arts and Crafts luminary Ernest A. Batchelder, including pairs of Art Nouveau peacocks.

Ternary was designed by architect Alfred Heineman, who also built the Grand Temple of the Rosy Cross, now part of the Krotona apartments. Heineman also slipped Egyptian and Islamic details into the Ternary, including slender keyhole windows near two front turrets.

Curiosity for Rent: Krotona apartments in the Hollywood Hills

“I’m probably the only guy with a motorcycle in his apartment,” Wilfred Biggs says. He opens the door to his studio at the Krotona apartments, originally built by the Theosophical Society in 1912. Although the sect, founded in 1875, delved into ancient Egyptian, Masonic and hermetic philosophies, tenants seem more keyed to Brad Pitt’s stoner scene from the 1993 movie "True Romance," shot in a second-floor apartment. But surface impressions, garnered at a property named for a mystical city, can be deceptive.

“Scott Spiegel has an apartment in back," Bigg says of the co-writer of "Evil Dead II" and writer, director, producer and actor for other horror films. "Quentin Tarantino lived on his couch for nine months when he was starting out."

Biggs, also a screenwriter and actor, is a 10-year resident of Krotona, his 1974 Honda ST90 parked next to his bed. Spiegel has lived here for 20 years. The Hollywood Hills site consists of a 17-unit building at 2130 Vista Del Mar Ave. and an adjoining domed building with a Moorish door:  Krotona’s Esoteric Room once used for group meditation.

Past tenants told Spiegel of life at Krotona in the bohemian '60s and '70s, when Jimi Hendrix bassist Noel Redding rented:  hallucinogenic parties, guitar and poetry sessions held around the courtyard’s lotus pond, a woman who sold tie-dye T-shirts out of her apartment.

Off-kilter Koreatown apartment building irks, inspires

Curiosity for Rent: Harvard Apartments, Koreatown

No one may have asked architect Stephen Kanner if he designed the whimsically skewed Harvard Apartments to annoy the neighbors, but after nearly 20 years, the 14-unit building punched with odd windows in Koreatown is doing just that.

“We all dislike it,” says Craig Lander, right, standing with a gaggle of his neighbors at the building next door, a 1937 structure called the French Chateau, which fronts James M. Wood Boulevard. Encircled by the French Chateau's balustrades, ornamental parapets, bay windows and soaring turrets, Lander says his neighbors call the 1992 Harvard Apartments “the Swiss cheese building.”  He adds that the Harvard doesn’t complement the area’s other structures.

“Maybe if it was painted one solid color, like gray,” Lander says, “it would be more attractive.”

Architecture writer Leon Whiteson differed in his 1993 Times article, calling the Harvard Apartments “an act of sheer delight.” He termed the design a “vivid fusion of seriousness and lightness.”

Architect Kanner said his client asked for a “building that was more than just another box.”  Kanner said he delivered a “ham-and-Swiss-cheese sandwich of white-bread Modernism with a filling of L.A. funk."  

Kanner, who died last year at age 54 from pancreatic cancer, bemoaned “the incredible sameness” of clients and architecture and “vanilla firms where profits are everything.” Many agreed, and the Harvard Apartments won awards, including the Distinguished Building Honor Award from the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Osiris Apartments: A bit of Egypt in L.A.

Curiosity for Rent: The Osiris Apartments, Westlake

Proclaiming its bond with the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the Osiris Apartments sport a towering sign, its letters studded with bulbs, now darkened.

The 30-unit building in Los Angeles' Westlake neighborhood was built in 1928 by architect J.M. Close, who also designed Hollywood’s Karnak and Ahmed apartments, as well as a 1930 Egyptian-inspired, 20-unit building at 747 Wilcox Ave.

The Osiris, at 430 S. Union Ave., has a colonnaded pylon-style base painted beige and trimmed elegantly in black. The lobby features a Moorish arch painted ochre and patterned with blue eyes called nazars, seen widely in the Middle East and used to ward off the evil eye, a glance believed to cause harm. Other Moorish arches, also painted ochre, are found at stairwell landings.

“J.M. Close had his eye on what would sell -- the latest and the exotic -- and he was astute at picking up on trends,” said Marcello Vavala, preservation associate at the Los Angeles Conservancy. Vavala added that Close’s office on Western Avenue was known for tropical plants and unusual furniture for the time. Close did most of his work from 1910 to 1935, including Spanish Colonial Revivals and a number of Hollywood bungalow courts.

Close’s initials stood for John Manley, but he preferred J.M., Vavala said. The architect’s blueprints were inspired by Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922.  Among other Egyptian revival buildings in Los Angeles: the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, the Vista Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz and the Citadel Outlets, formerly the Samson Tire and Rubber Co., which was modeled after a 7th century B.C. Assyrian palace.

Osiris tenant Howard Scott, 32, thought his building's sign was left over from an old hotel. Perched on the bed of his $598-a-month studio, Scott said the neighborhood is “a bit crowded for my taste, but I won’t live here forever. It’s for the moment.”

Asked about his tattoos, Scott said he got the first at age 18 -- comedy and tragedy masks inked on his right arm after his mother repeatedly told him that he was “overly dramatic.”  The maintenance employee at Fox Fitness in Culver City said he got small angel and devil tattoos on his throat at age 24 -- perhaps appropriate symbols for what it takes to court Osiris, god of the afterlife.

“I got the angel and the devil to remind me that I always have a choice -- to make a good or bad decision,” said Scott, who papered his walls with his sketches of DC and Marvel comics characters: Storm, Firestorm and Phoenix, among others.

Scott raised his hand to his neck. “The angel and devil remind me that right and wrong are here -- right at my throat.”

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Where the Beatles and Marilyn still live

Alexander Ruler of the World Apartments

-- R. Daniel Foster

"Curiosity for Rent," a series on the novel apartment buildings of Southern California, appears here on Wednesdays (with a bonus second installment today). You can send nominations to daniel@rdanielfoster.com. For an easy way to follow future installments, join our Facebook page for California home design.

Photos:  R. Daniel Foster 

Casas Isabella Apartments: Boring stucco boxes get a little character thanks to 'building whisperer'

Curiosity for Rent: Casas Isabella Apartments

What to do with a trio of rather gray apartments wedged along Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz?

Dress them up as Christopher Columbus’ famous three sailing ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

That may not have been your first choice. But designer Gene Bramson felt the buildings didn’t “visually own” Hillhurst Avenue. And as a “building whisperer” (more on that later), Bramson said the property ached for a vivid personality. 

“This gives them a bit of an identity and Spanish character,” said Bramson, head of Los Angeles-based Bramson & Associates.   “I suppose it could have been the Three Stooges or the Three Pigs, but this just felt right.”

As  a merged compound, the three buildings pay homage to Queen Isabella I of Castile, who financed Columbus’ galleons in 1492. Bramson thought that the theme, partly executed using signage, unified the buildings so they felt like a destination, not just an address.

Bramson hired a metal worker rather than a professional signage firm to create the shield-shaped signs that hang from each building.

“He hand-lettered them, and I thought it came out brilliant,” Bramson said. “I wanted something you might see on a cobblestone street in Madrid -- authentic, not slick.”