Web Links:
LA Weekly on Grifftith Park as a Historic-Cultural Monument
Griffith Park Natural History Survey
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Los Feliz is aware of the
cluster of hospitals on Sunset Blvd. near Vermont Ave. One of those hospitals
is Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, a giant resource in pediatrics right
on our collective doorsteps, so to speak.
The hospital is currently undertaking a fundraising effort dubbed “Los Feliz - A Communities That Cares”. The main goal is funding construction of the new Patient Tower near the corner of Sunset Blvd and Lyman Place, which is set to open in 2010. This spring a group of LFIA Board members visited the hospital. ... [continued here]
Exciting
and wonderful things are happening in Griffith Park! The Griffith J. Griffith
Charitable Trust has submitted a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument
(HCM) application to designate the park a monument! The application itself
was signed by Van Griffith, the great grandson of Griffith J. Griffith who
along with his wife Tina deeded the land to the City of Los Angeles on Christmas
Day in 1896. What a Christmas gift!Colonel Griffith anticipated the growth of Los Angeles and the need for a public park accessible to all. He stated that “Sunlight and air are the first requisites of sanity and health...public parks are a safety valve of great cities and should be made accessible and attractive...give nature a chance to do her good work and nature will give every person a greater strength in health, strength and mental power.” See what a walk in the park will do for you! ... [continued here]
There is exciting news in Los Angeles! Griffith Park has been nominated
for Historic-Cultural Monument status! The Griffith J. Griffith Charitable
Trust hired the firm of ICF Jones and Stokes to prepare the application which
was signed by Van Griffith, Colonel Griffith’s great-grandson. The
application was delivered to the City’s Office of Historic Preservation
on May 15. Monument status would help preserve the Griffith Park that we
all know and love.
The HCM application - all 350 pages of it availabe for download in one big pdf here - identifies and describes in great detail all of the historic structures in the Park. It describes the wilderness area of the Park with its native plants and animals. In addition, it identifies numerous examples of “Park Style” retaining walls and culverts built be federal assistance programs in the 1930s. ... [continued here]
LFIA President Marian Dodge took advantage of a photo op with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the anniversary of the Griffith Park Fire to urge him to retain Park Rangers. The city is currently facing massive budget deficits. The Mayor’s proposed budget would have cut 50% of the Park Rangers who provide so many services in our regional parks. Dodge explained that Rangers help prevent fires, which is a lot cheaper than fighting fires. The Mayor said he would review the matter.
LFIA, along with twenty other people, spoke in support of retaining Park Rangers at the Budget and Finance Committee’s hearing on May 1. LFIA also spoke in their support at the Arts, Parks, Health, and Aging Committee on May 7. When the budget was discussed at the full City Council on May 16, Councilmember Parks, the Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, assured us that the Park Ranger positions had been restored. The following day, the Mayor addressed a group of Neighborhood Councils and credited the influence of the Los Feliz Improvement Association in getting the Ranger positions restored. Making your opinion known can make a difference!
The groundbreaking for the long-awaited beautification of the Vermont Triangle at Vermont Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard was held on May 9. Rosemary DeMonte (GGPNC), Angela Stewart (LFIA), Nyla Arslanian (GGPNC) helped Councilmembers Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge with the shoveling. The landscaping will feature native sycamores and plants with street lights styled after the Frank Lloyd Wright lights at Barnsdall Park. The project is scheduled for completion in October, 2008.
The beautiful deodar cedar canopy bordering Los Feliz Boulevard is designated as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #67. Originally planted as a joint venture of the Los Feliz Improvement Association and the Los Feliz Woman’s Club in 1916, the trees are a special charge of LFIA’s Beautification Committee. Native to the Himalayas, the cedars can grow to 80 feet tall and comprise two varieties, Cedrus atlantica and Cedrus deodara.
The trees are continuously monitored for disease and vandalism. They are susceptible to stress and eventual death from drought or over-irrigation. The mounding of soil around the base of the tree allows fungal diseases to develop and can kill a tree. Thus, the trees occasionally require replacement. In March, the LFIA was instrumental in planting two new saplings. Several bare spots are waiting for new deodars to be planted. Individuals may donate trees to be planted along the boulevard. Contact LFIA Beautification Chair Tom Ford at beautification@lfia.org. [This story was first published in the Spring-Summer 2008 issue of our newsletter, the Los Feliz Observer. All issues are available for download here.]
A poem lovely as a tree
And you won’t
be seeing this one for long. On April 2, 2008, the Board of Public Works
approved a permit to remove five protected native oak trees on the lot at
3662 Cadman Drive adjacent to Griffith Park. The Board stated that the property
owner had the right to reasonably develop his property. Since this 100-year-old
oak covers almost the entire property, he is allowed to remove it and the
others.LFIA spoke in favor of saving the tree. It was noted that planting four small trees will hardly mitigate the loss of this beautiful specimen tree. There are many other difficulties involved in the development of this particular lot. The realtor should have disclosed all of these issues to the buyer. The street is substandard so the owner must donate three feet to the city to widen the street. To provide access for emergency vehicles the owner will have to build several retaining walls to create a “hammerhead” turn around stub driveway between his property and the next. He also has to sink 15 concrete piles 46 feet into the ground at the back of the lot to stabilize the steep slope below the house on Shannon.
CD 4 supported Urban Forestry’s recommendation to allow removal of the trees. The owner will be required to plant four 36-inch-box oaks for each tree removed for a total of twenty trees. Since only a few of the trees will fit on the lot after the home is built, the rest will be planted in Griffith Park. That is some compensation for the loss of the oaks.
Saturday morning, April 5, the owner began clearing the lot.
When the LFIA Schools Committee envisioned creating
the Thomas Starr King Middle School Gifted/High Ability Technology Arts Magnet
there was no way that we could have imagined the wonderful ways that the
teachers and students would utilize their talents to make this program thrive. This
will be all the more obvious at the upcoming 5th edition of the school's
Annual Animation & Film Festival which is scheduled for Sunday June 22nd
at the Vista
Theatre from 9:45 am to 12 noon. The LFIA
has provided some financial support for this endeavour.
For me, the
best part about the film festival is that it is not only open to every
magnet student but also every 8th grade student at King that takes History/Journalism
from Mr. Brandon Cabezas, Expressive Poetry Films from Ms. Connie Martin,
or the Computer Animation Class from Mr. Kirk Palayan.
In addition to that
it is held at the beautiful Vista Theater in our community. I encourage
everyone to visit the festival's website at www.animationandfilmfestival.com and
click on the stars for more information. Bring your school age children
to the Vista Theater in June to see for yourself the great ways that King
students are expressing themselves.
Mary
Rodriguez, LFIA Schools Committee Member
Here
are some impressions from a participant in the DWP Light Festival walking
nights, a pilot program that took place November 21st-25th in Griffith Park.People really loved it. Our community hit the nail on the head in terms of the environment and traffic, but the obvious increase in family enjoyment and social interaction was a huge and unexpected dividend. Subtracting cars turned the Festival into a big, friendly public outdoor space where people could experience each other, take pictures of each other, and move at their own pace. Children were dance-walking to the more rhythmic holiday music being played, some people were even singing along to the classics. ... [continued here]
On Wednesday, November 7, the LFIA held their 2007 Fall General Meeting.
The topic of the evening was "Colonel Griffith's Vision of Griffith Park
As An Urban Wilderness" and featured a distinguished panel of speakers
including John Gray, President and CEO of the Autry National Center; Tom
LaBonge, Councilmember of the Los Angeles City Council, District Four;
John Lewis, Director of the Los Angeles Zoo; Jon Kirk Mukri, General
Manager of the Los Angeles City Department of Recreation and Parks; Mark
Pine, Deputy Director of the Griffith Observatory and Valerie Vanaman,
Board of Directors Member of the LFIA and member of the Griffith Park
Master Plan Working Group. Chris Laib was our MC for the evening's
panel discussion and following Q&A session. ... [continued here]
This was truly a collaborative community effort led by the Los Feliz Improvement Association. LFIA was supported by many groups including the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council, the Vermont Neighborhood Association, the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Hillside Federation, and the Griffith Family Trust. Many, many thanks to all of you who attended the hearing on September 25.
Thanks also go to attorney Doug Carstens, of Chatten-Brown & Carstens representing the Vermont Neighborhood Association, who wrote a letter to the Planning Commissioners to point out the fact that Puck's application did not meet CEQA and EIR requirements. [Read Puck’s letter to the Planning Commission here.]
For the past 18 years, LFIA board member and chair of the Beautification Committee, Margret Lohfeld has tirelessly led the cleanup charge in our community. She is a human dynamo with more energy than the Energizer Bunny. In addition to leading cleanup crews half a dozen times a year, she goes out with one or two people weekly on “trashy dates” to do spot cleanups throughout the neighborhood. She has zealously protected the deodar canopy on Los Feliz Blvd. and has been responsible for planting new trees. Her citizenship is unparalleled. ... [continued here]
Have you ever been curious about who used to live in your house or who your neighbors were in 1920 and 1930? The Los Feliz Improvement Association is very pleased to include the 1920 and the 1930 U.S. Census information about Los Feliz homes in its website. This data was compiled for the LFIA History Committee by Donald A. Seligman in 2004.
The detailed United States census data is kept confidential for 70 years, and it was only in 2002 that the 1930 data was finally released into the public domain. This material is rich in detail and organized by each individual property. It gives a remarkable picture of the times 70 years ago and earlier and includes a wealth of specific information about the individuals living in the United States at the time of each census. ... [continued here]
The Academic Decathlon team from John Marshall High School held a fundraiser and honored its Hall of Fame members on August 13 at Taix Restaurant. The Decathlon is a nation-wide competition in ten academic areas. Marshall has been one of the top five Los Angeles teams for the last eleven years, a City record! In fact the competition in LAUSD is so competitive that the State started inviting "wild cards" to the state finals. Marshall has gone to nine state finals and won the national championship twice, in 1987 and in 1995. The Hall of Fame honors team members who score more than 8,000 points, a nearly impossible achievement. In the last twenty years 34 students have qualified for the Hall of Fame.
LFIA has been supporting our local schools since the 1920s when we lobbied the school district to build a high school for our community and Marshall was constructed. This year LFIA is pleased to support the 2007-2008 Academic Decathlon team with a check for $1,000.
Margret Lohfeld of the Schools Committee and LFIA President Marian Dodge present a check for $1,000 to Marshall's Academic Decathlon Coach Larry Welch. 4730 Crystal Springs Drive
The lecture is free and open to the public.
1965 Hillhurst, Los Angeles CA 90027