In my previous post, I wrote about several local library systems as part of my observance of National Library Week. One of them was in Gardena, California.

As I sorted through photos I’d shot in Gardena (gar-DEE-nah) — a city in metropolitan Los Angeles County — I realized I’d never written about one interesting piece of local architecture: the post office. Historic post office buildings are a casual interest of mine, and Gardena’s is a well preserved example of one standard model built during the Depression by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA).

In 1939, Gardena was only beginning to emerge from its origins as a small farming community. With slightly fewer than 5,000 residents, it had not long before been primarily fields of crops, and was just attracting its first residential housing developments.

During the Depression, the WPA constructed thousands of public buildings, roads, bridges and other projects. A significant number of those buildings were post offices. Some were unique designs, while others followed one of several standard plans. Gardena’s cast concrete structure was one of the latter, nearly identical to many others, inside and out.

Style!

The constrained economy limited construction budgets, but WPA buildings of all types come with more than simple, nondescript styling. Many of them demonstrate what’s become known as “WPA Moderne,” a variety of the Streamline Moderne design then in vogue.

Sleek, “clean” lines and those fluted pilasters were typical. In the Gardena example there are still two surviving original lamp posts outside, reinforcing the “verticality” of Streamline Moderne.

Artwork

Another common characteristic of many WPA structures, including post offices, was that interiors were often decorated — sometimes elaborately — by artwork commissioned by another branch of the government’s Public Works of Art project that employed artists and designers. They include murals, mosaics, paintings and — in Gardena’s case — a wooden bas-relief mahogany sculpture.

Created by Rudolph Parducci, the sculpture, “Rural Life,” reflects an agricultural Gardena that was soon to disappear. In its place today is a city with a mixture of light industrial areas and expansive suburban housing, with a population of nearly 60,000.

Transportation

Look again at the exterior of the building and the bas-relief emblems in the transoms above the central doorway and two flanking windows. The Post Office touted its use of all means of transportation to move the mail.

By rail:

By air:

And aboard ships.

When I stopped to see Gardena’s post office, I assumed those stylized symbols were unique to the building. A year ago, I was in Centralia, Washington, where the WPA-constructed post office shares the same fundamental structure and floor plan with Gardena’s, amongst many others, although faced with local brick. Even the lettering at the top of the building is executed in the same style. It’s likely that those lamp posts are replacements, still somewhat adhering to the style.

Look above the door and flanking windows (click on any image for larger view):

The same bas relief murals are there in Centralia, in the same sequence, probably cast from the same molds. I assume there are other examples scattered across the United States. The WPA was a massive undertaking. The use of some standarized plans — even exterior decoration — enabled some economies in a program that eventually provided 8 million jobs during the Great Depression.

I’d be pleased to hear from you if  you have a post office in your town with these same features. Please leave a comment.

Seeing the Gardena and Centralia Post Offices

Gardena is about 14 miles due south of downtown Los Angeles, just west of the Harbor Freeway (I-110). The post office still operates at 1103 W Gardena Blvd.

Centralia is about 25 miles south of Olympia, Washington, immediately east of Interstate 5. Centralia’s post office, also still in operation, is at 238 W Locust St.

Licensable, high resolution versions of most photographs in this post, and select images from other Under Western Skies posts are available on Shutterstock.com. Click on the linked photos, or CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky photo portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2020. Research assistance from the extensive WPA related material on The Living New Deal.

National Library Week is drawing to a close in the U.S. I began the week stating what many of you literate and curious readers already knew: Libraries offer a rich variety of information digitally, although most of them are physically closed, world ’round, for the current pandemic.

In the past ten years, I’ve written about several dozen libraries. Sometimes I’ve limited myself to descriptions and photos of current and former library buildings — from impressive to workaday — as I did most recently about this 1927 building in Wilmington, California.

Libraries, of course, aren’t simply structures, however elaborately imposing some are. Their worth abides in the information they make available, the services provided by dedicated librarians, and one more thing: They represent the pride of place communities have. Every town needs roads, water systems, a city hall, stores, a pharmacy, perhaps a lumber or grain mill. In addition, one of the first things to which citizens gave attention as their settlements grew to villages, towns, cities, was to establish a library.

That’s what happened in rural Beaumont, California in 1913, which I wrote about here.

The original Carnegie library building still stands. The library has expanded, and serves a burgeoning population in the town on the edge of the desert.

More to Discover

Looking through my files, I’ve found three libraries I’ve visited, about which I’ve never written. I’ll start close to home: Redondo Beach, California.

I did write about the 1928 Redondo Beach library, which is now a community center.

Redondo has a new library, its much larger footprint reflecting the growth of the city from a scruffy seaport to a thriving coastal city of 67,000.

Redondo’s is a “special library district,” not part of the Los Angeles Public or L.A. County library systems, a point of pride for many communities, willing to fund and maintain their own library. Redondo also maintains a branch serving the North Redondo area.

The first Redondo library was in a wooden shack on a wharf, part of the busy shipping port in 1895. In 1909, the library moved into the new city hall (which no longer stands). By 1928, the library occupied half the space in city hall, and that’s when the city built the old structure pictured above.

In 1995, 100 years after that first building on Wharf No. 1 was the library, the city opened its new Main Library.

Where Next? Inland

Gardena, California is, like Redondo Beach, one of more than 70 incorporated cities within the greater Los Angeles area. Originally a farming community — hence its name — it now has about 60,000 residents, and includes a mixture of extensive suburban streets, light industry, and some vestiges of its original downtown, where the 1939 post office building still serves.

Not far away on Gardena Blvd. is an extensive civic complex, built in a consistent low-slung style of the 1960s, with city offices, safety and emergency departments and — yes — a library.

The Mayme Dear Library, built in 1964. is one of 87 branches in the Los Angeles County Library system. Fittingly enough, Mayme Dear was a librarian.

Notable is the mural.

Public art can be uplifting, inspiring, tepid or … less. I like this one, designed by Livio Napolitani, depicting writing, printing and books throughout history.

Farther East: 800 Miles

With 580,000 residents, Albuquerque, New Mexico has had a public library since 1901, when the desert town had slightly more than 6,000 residents. Since then, the local system has expanded to include 18 branches serving the city and surrounding Bernalillo County.

The sprawling Main Library, built in 1975, is downtown, not far from the original 1901 building.

Three Amongst Tens of Thousands, Worldwide

A former lumber shipping port. A farm town. A desert way station along the Santa Fe Trail and the Southern Pacific Railroad. All grown up in different ways. Cultures, lifestyles, scenery, climate, all different. Income levels and occupations run the gamut. One thing in common: They have libraries. It costs them money and effort, especially when it’s time for that bond issue or tax levy. Everywhere, communities think libraries are worth it.

As you know.

All these libraries offer a variety of digital services, accessible now while their physical locations are closed, and thereafter, as well.

Is there some local library history your town’s proud of? Please leave a comment.

Logistics

Click on the links below to access the websites for the libraries mentioned in this post.

Beaumont Library District, 125 E Eighth Street, Beaumont, CA

Redondo Beach Main Library, 303 N. Pacific Coast Hwy., Redondo Beach, CA

Gardena Mayme Dear Library, 1731 W Gardena Blvd.; Gardena, CA

Albuquerque Main Library: 501 N. Copper Ave. NW; Albuquerque, NM

Licensable, high resolution versions of some photographs in this post, and select images from other Under Western Skies posts are available on Shutterstock.com. Click on the linked photos, or CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky photo portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2020. My appreciation to librarians at these and dozens of other libraries I’ve visited.

It’s National Library Week. Although I can’t travel far during the current pandemic, I visited a nearby architectural gem without violating the social distancing rules: almost a “drive-by,” but I was able to get out of the car to shoot some photos on a quiet street.

In a recent blog post, I wrote about the surviving structure from Civil War era Camp Drum, Drum Barracks, in Wilmington, California, constructed 1862-63.

You’re excused if Wilmington isn’t a familiar California place name.

In the mid 19th century, Wilmington was an independent city, larger than Los Angeles proper, home of the newly established Port of Los Angeles. Annexed by Los Angeles in 1909 — in order to gain more control over the port and its commerce, as well as one of the richest oil fields in the U.S. — Wilmington now has about 54,000 residents in 10 square miles.

While Wilmington’s citizens weren’t unanimously in favor of annexation, there were advantages.

One addition to the town, arriving in 1927, was an attractive new branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Designed by W. E. McAllister in a version of Spanish Colonial Revival, it’s small but stylish, set on the corner in a quiet residential neighborhood.

Obscured now by palms and possibly one of Wilmington’s trademark camphor trees (left, above), the one-story building has side wings to left and right of the central block extending away from the street.

The highly stylized entablature or frieze over the entrance is probably molded concrete. Whether or not the mold was custom-designed for this structure, I’ve been unable to determine.

This is not one of six Carnegie libraries built in Los Angeles in 1911, two of which I’ve written about at the following links: Lincoln Heights and Cahuenga branches.

Instead, the growing size, population and reach of Los Angeles was served by a steadily expanding public library system that today encompasses the LA Central Library and 72 branches.

This structure is no longer a library, although there is still a Wilmington branch library, located a few blocks away, opened in 1988. This original building now serves — as do innumerable old library buildings across the U.S. — as a community center. It, along with a number of Los Angeles branch libraries, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

For ways to engage with your local library during the pandemic stay at home, please see my previous post at this link.

Seeing the Former Wilmington Branch.

The building is at 309 W Opp St. on the NW corner of W Opp and N Fries. Bear in mind that there’s residential curb parking. Please do not block someone’s driveway.

Licensable, high resolution versions of some photographs in this post, and select images from other Under Western Skies posts are available on Shutterstock.com. Click on the linked photos, or CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky photo portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2020

Each year, Under Western Skies celebrates public libraries in observance of the U.S. National Library Week.

It’s now National Library Week 2020, with the theme, “Find Your Place at the Library.”

The obstacles confronting this year’s observances have immediately occurred to you: Most — if not all — the public libraries on planet Earth are closed as part of the cautions regarding the spread of the Covid 19 virus. Finding “your place at the library” excludes actually walking into a library.

But, in significant ways, many libraries are open, virtually.

If you’re reading this blog post, you have means to access the Internet. You, therefore, can likely access a library’s assets.

That statement has a somewhat dispiriting undertone. There are a significant number of people for whom a public library IS their Internet connection. Free, public computers and online access are a staple service offered by libraries large and small. Here, for example, in the historic library in Albany, Oregon, built in 1912.

There, on the original oak library table, almost a century old: computers. Now a fixture in most public libraries. Beyond the imagination of Andrew Carnegie, whose wealth funded construction of the building but left the contents to the discretion of the people of Albany.

Libraries Are Open … Virtually

Many of us who have an Internet connection can still use the library. What can we do?

Check out electronic books — either text or audio versions — downloaded to your computer or mobile device. Currently, there are three downloaded books in the Under Western Skies household, and more will be on their way. Go to your local library’s website. You may be impressed with what you find there.

Check out movies to watch at home. Services libraries use include Kanopy, Hoopla, Overdrive and others. These are not Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or other paid services, but you may be pleased to find hundreds or thousands of free movies available, as I’ve done in recent weeks. Again, check the library website. Possibly something you did not know.

Maybe you’ve always meant to practice yoga, tai chi, meditation. There are online courses for those, not to mention photography, calligraphy, and any number of of subjects. You’re not going anywhere for some number of weeks. A world awaits.

Take language courses via Rosetta Stone and other services. Always meant to extend your grasp of Mandarin, Italian or other foreign languages in preparation for your next trip? Now’s the time. Perhaps you’ll establish the habit in a way that will stay with you after the pandemic recedes.

Research news, genealogy, government or university archives. You may be impressed or surprised with the current publications and research your library already offered online, prior to the current shutdown. Little Miss Traveler from the Love Travelling Blog recommends Press Reader, available from some libraries, although there are a variety of services.

Call, Write, Connect

Despite the challenges, public libraries are doing their best to continue to serve. Some still have staff answering phone calls, or at least monitoring phone messages. Others will respond to online queries. If you have a question, contact them. The librarians at the other end of the line have degrees in library science. This is their hour. Ask them your question, and thank them.

No Library Card?

If you don’t have a library card, most public library websites I’ve checked offer the ability to enroll in your local library’s online lending program. I realize that not all libraries across the world have the means or scope to do so. I can only hope that you’re within virtual reach of a library, and that it will will represent a resource for you as we hunker down against the day that the crisis has passed.

Beyond Media

Public libraries provide many community services not directly related to books, movies and information media. Some have long records of providing much needed meals, especially to children, and many are striving to continue those services in the current crisis.

Many libraries offer story-telling events, special presentations, and more than a few have shifted those events to digital, online delivery. Check your library’s website.

Large and Small

I live in one of the cities that comprise the Los Angeles metropolis. My virtual library options are many. My own city operates a special library district with significant digital resources, and I’m also entitled to borrowing privileges with the extensive Los Angeles city and county library systems. In smaller cities and towns, you’ll likely have fewer options, but you may be pleased to find your library’s website does have resources available.

I went to the website of the Silver City, New Mexico Public Library. Population about 10,000, and a great place to visit, at the foot of the Gila Mountains in the southwestern corner of the state.

Yes, if you live in Silver City, the library website (link above) offers some of the same digital resources I have here in Los Angeles. Just one example. Celebrate National Library Week, and thank a librarian when you have a chance.

Please let me and Under Western Skies readers know if your library is there while we’re staying at home. Leave a comment.

© Brad Nixon 2020

“Stay at home” is the general English language order of the day during the Covid 19 crisis. Alternatively, “shelter in place,” and any number of alternatives.

We all know that words matter. Not merely for their objective meaning, but what they imply. There’s a difference between objective definition — denotation — and implication  — connotation.

I don’t know it for a fact, but I suspect that few — if any — municipal, state or federal governments use the the English term, “lockdown” to describe the current orders on limitations of personal movement during the Covid 19 pandemic. The word is freighted with negative connotation. Never the less, one can see “lockdown” reported in the media. It’s an excellent English word which immediately conveys the sense of what’s going on.

Let’s examine how we came to adopt those words, then explore a bit about connotation.

Stay

The first word in “stay at home” will serve as a softball to the Latinists out there. Modern English gets the word from Medieval Middle English steien (say “stayen“) via a familiar route: Old French ester (modern French retains ester: to appear in court), from Latin stāre, to stand.

There IS an Old English standan, from the same root, but it is not related to our present-day sense of “to stay.” It applies only to various senses of standing in place and a dizzying number of derivatives.

That’s it for French and Latin in this post. After this, we’re going to stay with Germanic roots back to proto-Indo European.

Home

All languages with which I have any acquaintance have a word for “home.”

Almost all Germanic languages have words for “home” that closely resemble one another, from an ancient, common root word. Those old Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought it with them to the shores of Britain. The Oxford English Dictionary cites not only Old German, Norse, Teutonic and Frisian precursors, but rarely-mentioned languages, including Old Lithuanian and Gothic. “Home,” in a variety of forms, has always been with us. “Home” is a fundamental concept.

In English, from the earliest records, we have hām, meaning anything from an individual dwelling to a village or town. We still apply “home” in a wide variety of contexts, signifying everything from the house in which we grew up to planet Earth. Everyone knows hām from hundreds of English place-names: Evesham, Cheltenham, name your -ham. That’s “home.” It’s been precisely the same word for more than 1,000 years.

Lock

Another word pronounced just the same as it was in Old English is lock, commonly spelled loc in old texts.

In the 10th century, before there were mechanical locks, loc signified a bolt or bar across the door. In the way that English has, the word was both noun and verb: both a thing and an action. One could put a loc across the door, or locan the door. Some language rules haven’t changed across many centuries. We’ll come back to a participial form of loc, below.

Down

It makes sense that directions have been with us for a long time: there, here, left, right, up, down. Before there was language, one can imagine our earliest ancestors pointing to indicate direction. By the time we English speakers were developing our language, we had a sophisticated way of referring to direction in relationship to the landscape. “Down” is an excellent example.

One of many words for a hill was dūne. Obviously recognizable as the word many English speakers now associate with sand formations shaped by wind or water, although the Scots still have it in its original sense, “doon.” In Old English, to descend from a hill, one would go ofdūne, “off the hill,” which gave us “down” (Dative case, to pacify any lurking Latinists feeling left out).

We clever English speakers have shortened it to “down.” We have little patience with expendable qualifiers.

LOCKDOWN

With the compound word, “lockdown,” we move from denotation to connotation.

It’s one thing to say that one will stay at home. “Home,” from earliest times, is one of the most comforting, reassuring terms in the language. Despite what Thomas Wolfe may have told us, we all want to go home again. In the present circumstances we’re stuck there, by decree.

To say one is “locked down,” however, is to evoke an entirely different set of associations, identified with the direst of concepts: imprisonment.

Morning and evening, and any time the warders declare, prisoners are locked down in their cells. It may be to do a headcount (another word worth investigating), or it may be to assure that the Warden or VIP visitors aren’t subject to rude interruptions by unruly or potentially violent inmates.

To be locked down in prison is the worst. Life ends. There are only the four walls of your cell, and you cannot open a door controlled by forces beyond your reach.

If you’re writing a speech for your local mayor, governor or president, advise them to call it a stay at home order, not a lockdown. By connotation, a lockdown is imprisonment. Bad things happen when you employ the wrong word. As Mrs. Drake advised me in both freshman and senior English, be cognizant of both denotation and connotation.

Envoi

Here, I’ll mention one of the most notable uses of Old English loc, from Beowulf. The form of the verb — “unlocked” — appears as onlēac, but it’s the same word we use today.

To him, the oldest one answered unerring,
Wisest of counselors, he unlocked his word-hoard.

He spoke: unlocked his word-hoard. As good as it gets in this language, so far as I’m concerned.

Have you spotted any notable uses of the language of restraint and containment in your part of the world? How do you say “Stay at Home” in your language?” Please leave a comment. Unlock your word hoard.

© Brad Nixon 2020. My translation from Beowulf, ll 1111-1112, ed. Klaber, D. C. Heath, Lexington, 1950. Etymology courtesy The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin, New York 2000; Compact Edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University, 1971; Cassell’s French Dictionary, MacMillan Publishing Company, New York, 1982; A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, J.R Clark-Hall, Wilder Publications, 2011.

Staying in place during the current Covid 19 pandemic has had a few, faint positive spin-off effects.

At no time do I want to suggest during this post that the crisis is anything but mind-numbingly grave on an epic scale. I do not make light of these circumstances in any way. I know millions of people face grinding hardship.

Isolation of various — often extreme — degrees has reminded people the world over of how precious is contact with other people: family, friends, co-workers, the familiar clerk behind the counter at the neighborhood market. We’re social animals. Deprived of social contact, we wither, decline.

Video conferencing is filling part of that gap to an unprecedented degree. Just a few days ago, I participated in a live video conference that included 23 members of my extended family from 4 generations, in 8 cities, coast-to-coast across the U.S.A. You may have a similar story.

Having spent a considerable chunk of my professional career producing video programs, I’d like to offer 3 tips to enhance your next video conference.

Video Is Horizontal

Look at your computer screen. Look at your television set. Video is wider than it is tall. Video conference applications assume that you will fill your portion of the screen with an image in horizontal format. If you hold your mobile phone or tablet vertically, you’ll only be using about 1/3 of the space allotted you.

Turn your mobile device horizontally. For a full-on explication of this subject, see my previous post at this link.

Light Is All. All Is Light.

What any photograph, video image or work of art shows is not a face or a room or any other object. It shows the light reflecting from those faces and objects. That is the first lesson any photographer, videographer or cinematographer (or painter) learns on Day One of their professional training: It’s the light!

Composing and framing the image occupies about 10% of a professional image-maker’s attention. The rest is given over to lighting.

The lenses and processors built into the newest generation of computing devices are impressively sophisticated. They compensate for many errors, but they have limits. No commonly available camera possesses the astounding ability of the human eye and brain to process images.

You are the subject of your video conference. You don’t have to sit in bright sunlight, but you should be better lighted than the background, not in shadow.

Do not pose yourself against a brightly lighted wall or outside window. Few cameras can compensate for extremes in contrast the way the human eye does. Against a bright background, you may appear as a mere silhouette. Cameras are not as intelligent as the brain: They’re actually programmed to disregard you and pay attention to the brighter light. LOOK at yourself on that screen: Can you see yourself? It’s as simple as that.

Can We Hear You?

The microphones built into computers, phones and tablets are relatively sophisticated, but have limited range.

If you’re too far away from your device, the sound of your ordinary, conversational voice falls off dramatically with distance from the receiver.

Here, we face a brutal reality. None of us who aren’t Penelope Cruz or Brad Pitt enjoy seeing ourselves onscreen in high definition. (I like to think of Mr. Pitt seeing himself in the screening room, thinking, “Darn! I HATE my face in that shot!” And I’ll bet it happens.)

Our tendency is to back away from the camera. Unfortunately, that means we’re also moving away from the microphone, and the level of audio diminishes quickly with distance. Your family, friends and co-workers want to SEE you AND hear you. They already know what you look like. Face up to it: That’s you.

I’m named Brad, but I’m not Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper or any other leading-man Brad. Mine is the face I have, although I avoid spending much time with it in the mirror. Let it be so.

Postscript

Here’s a tip I encountered a few weeks after I wrote the above.

To make your video conference more personal, remember that if you’re looking at your screen, you’re not making eye contact with anyone else. You can only do that by looking into the camera. That disassociation of your gaze introduces an inevitable distance between you and your fellow conferees.

Yes, you want to see their faces. At least while you’re speaking, and occasionally while you’re listening, direct your line of view to the camera, which is in the center above the screen on most devices — or to the left or right if you’ve turned a mobile on its side to be horizontal. Contact! The human touch.

Say Hi to Everyone!

Three simple tips: horizontal video, lighting, sound. Stay in touch, write, call, conference. We’re all in this, billions of us. Maybe your familiar face, the sound of your voice, will add that human touch to an extremely harsh reality for someone close to you, but far away.

Have you had a video conference during stay-at-home time? Other tips? Please leave a comment.

© Brad Nixon 2020

Travel in a bubble? That’s the reality of stay-at-home isolation. The Web is replete with virtual visits to museums, cities, faraway places one can tour online during our time spent at home.

One recourse for a travel blogger is to mine deeper into previous trips to uncover the previously unreported. That risks evoking a sort of nostalgia for places one cannot go in the immediate future; one can only remember.

I do intend to go back to Venice. I won’t mind if the cruise ship throngs are slower to return than I. This scene of a jam-packed Piazza San Marco in 2011 was … daunting.

Drive-By Tourism?

The only way to not only see but genuinely appreciate most of the world is by getting out and walking around. Currently, that’s a challenge, and to be avoided. Lots of walks, both near and far, are simply off limits. That includes magnificent places not that far away from me, like Joshua Tree National Park.

The entire park — as well as most other U.S. national parks — is completely closed. I trust the flora and fauna are glad to be rid of us. For once, they can roam freely, breathe, grow, without irritating bipeds crashing through the chaparral, forests and mountains.

The alternative to travel nostalgia is a form of making-do. Running necessary errands does at least get one out of the house. Perhaps there’s something to see near home? That, after all, is one of the premises here at Under Western Skies: There’s lots to see close-by, if we only LOOK.

Other than the trips to the grocery every 7 or 9 days, which require immersion into a space with other people, most errands are non-contact events. Last week, I had a check to deposit, drove a mile to the ATM outside the bank and waited for the area to be clear. I donned my mask, punched buttons, then got back into the car.

A perfect opportunity to cruise through a nearby neighborhood I’d never seen. No meetings to attend, traffic was light, everyone staying home.

From the bank, I drove lazily east into a residential neighborhood of San Pedro, California.

The “Castle”

One local site I’d read about but never seen is the “Danish Castle.” It’s in a residential neighborhood not far from the bank, but away from any of my usual routes. In a few blocks, I stopped on quiet 10th Street, looking at it.

Admittedly, it’s not the grandest of all castles.

Built in the 1880s, the oldest structure on the block by some decades, it’s reminiscent of tens of thousands of Victorian era houses in the United States, but different in detail. It reflects the architecture from the home country of the original owner, a Danish sea captain who sailed in and out of the Port of Los Angeles, not many blocks away.

From that widow’s walk or cupola on top, one would have a panoramic view of the harbor.

Reportedly, sailors in the port named it “Danish Castle.” Whether or not the owner had a charming Danish name for it is not recorded.

From the Grand to the Petite

Utility work on 10th St. forced me to cut over one block south to 11th before heading home: another street I’d never explored. There — unlooked for — at the intersection with Mesa St., one of my favorite forms of period architecture in Los Angeles: a bungalow court.

Spanish Mission or Spanish Colonial Revival or something like that. I estimate it’s from the the 1920s, although I’m not so ambitious as to search through county land records to find out. Nearly a hundred years old, forty years newer than the Danish Castle one street away, reflecting a change in the residential patterns of the city. Its central courtyard now rather pedestrian, but a notable survivor from another era.

Bungalow courts originated in L.A. early in the 20th century: a way for property owners and developers to maximize rental return on relatively small plots of land. In denser cities like New York and Chicago, the only way to build was up: tenements and apartment blocks. In wide-open, widespread greater Los Angeles, room for single story architecture was (and remains) widely available.

As settlers and vacationers streamed into the sunshine and ocean breezes of the Golden State, they needed places to stay. Compact, multi-unit dwellings arranged around central courtyards, built in a variety of architectural styles, took hold.

I’ve written about historic bungalow courts numerous times before. Here’s an introduction at this link.

I did get out of the car to walk into the intersection of Mesa and 11th to shoot the photo above. One of the benefits of the stay at home order is that … many people stay at home, and there’s little life-threatening traffic on residential streets.

When I turned to look at the west side of 11th Street, what was there? This.

Another bungalow court, this time in all-out Craftsman style, maybe 10 years younger than its neighbor across the street, maybe less.

Four units along a central court, built in mirror images of a single floor plan (an easy trick, even given the graphic limitations of diazo chemical blueprint printing technology of the day). Again, the courtyard has declined from what may have been a more elaborately landscaped swath in the 1930s, but the buildings still have all those Craftsman hallmarks: gable roofs, attic windows, covered front porches, wide eaves. Originally, possibly roofed with wooden cedar shakes, now asphalt shingles in dry, fire-prone southern California.

Take the Long Way Home

Yes, we’re sticking close to home. Still, the way not previously taken, however near, might have something to see. We’ll never know if we don’t go to look.

Please bear in mind that all the buildings in this post are private residences. Please respect the privacy of residents if you cruise past for a look. The Danish Castle is at 324 W. 10th St., San Pedro, California. The bungalow courts occupy opposite sides of 11th St., just north of the intersection with Mesa, at 1033 S. Mesa St. and at 429 W. 11th St.

Licensable, high resolution versions of some photographs in this post, and select images from other Under Western Skies posts are available on Shutterstock.com. Click on the linked photos, or CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky photo portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2020

For as long as there’s been human history, there have been armies marching across nearly every square foot of the inhabited planet. Armies need supplies. Whether you’re Agamemnon camped outside Troy, Antony and Octavian at Alexandria, Genghis Khan in central Asia, or Napoleon staggering away from Moscow, you need supplies.

Here’s a typical 19th century scene from that history: animals outside a military camp, one of them a draft animal. This is Camp Drum in Wilmington, California, circa 1863.

Is that a Camel?

The horse is easy to identify. The large, hairy, somewhat lumpy creature in front of it is, indeed a camel. It was one of several hundred camels the U. S. Army imported from Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey and Greece for use in the arid southwest. Based originally in Camp Verde, Texas, the “Camel Corps” was a reality between about 1855 and 1864.

On a significant number of long, demanding traverses of arid, rugged territory, the camels proved themselves superior to the Army’s draft animal of choice, mules.

That camel in the photo was probably one of about 31 originally sent to Ft. Tejon, beyond a mountain pass north of Los Angeles. Merely driving over the Tejon Pass in an automobile on an interstate highway can be a harrowing experience today, if there is snow or ice on the steep climb to the 4,144 ft. (1,263 m) summit. Ft. Tejon stood on the far side of the pass. Supplying the garrison there was a logistical challenge. Hence: camels.

A Civil War Camp in Los Angeles?

I’m actually here to write not about camels, but why that particular camel is tied up outside a military post in the Los Angeles area during the Civil War. I’ll come back to the camels.

At the outset of the Civil War in April, 1861, there was considerable support for the Confederate cause in southern California. A large number of settlers had come from southern states. There were active demonstrations — some armed — for the southern cause. Presidential candidate and Confederate sympathizer John C. Breckinridge outpolled Abraham Lincoln 2-to-1 in the Los Angeles area in the 1860 election.

Phineas Banning, founder of Wilmington, south of Los Angeles, and the driving force in establishing the Port of L.A. there, wrote to President Lincoln, advising him that without an armed force, southern California and its ports could easily be seized by the Confederacy and the state lost to the Union without a fight.

In response, by 1862, the government began building Camp Drum on nearly 100 acres of land Banning and another local leader sold for $1 for each man. By 1863, the Army completed at least 19 buildings housing from 2,000 to 7,000 troops at various times.

Along with troops, the Ft. Tejon camels were also relocated to Camp Drum.

One of those buildings — formerly officers’ quarters — still stands.

The building is called Drum Barracks, a name that was also applied in the camp’s heyday to the entire compound. There were a number of nearly identical structures in the original camp, although the period photograph above shows two buildings built on a different plan.

Primarily, the Camp Drum garrison was what we’d call today a “deterrent force.” But when Confederate troops, the Texas Volunteers, occupied portions of New Mexico Territory, including Tucson, in 1862, approximately 2,300 soldiers rode and marched east about 500 miles from Camp Drum to confront them.

In a poorly executed skirmish — against a standing order not to engage — a Union lieutenant on a scouting foray led a dozen mounted troops in an attack on a small band of Confederates ensconced in deep brush on steep terrain. A number of Union soldiers, including the lieutenant, were killed. That small engagement, known as the Battle of Picacho Pass, was the westernmost fight of the war. In relatively short order, the Texas Volunteers retreated eastward in the face of the superior enemy force and the Union forces reoccupied Tucson.

Sole Survivor

The army continued to staff Camp Drum for a number of years after the war, but abandoned it in 1870. The single remaining structure is now in admirable condition.

The government auctioned off the buildings and restored the land to Banning and his colleague, Benjamin Davis Wilson, the first mayor of Los Angeles.

Wilson donated land and two buildings to the Methodist church, including the surviving structure. The church opened Wilson College there, allegedly the first coeducational college west of the Mississippi River. It operated on the site for only a short time before relocating to another site. That school later evolved into the University of Southern California.

Today, after several decades of hovering near dereliction, Drum Barracks has been restored by volunteer efforts and is owned by the State of California. It now operates as a Civil War museum. I toured it some years ago, and enjoyed it. As I write, the museum is closed for the duration of the current Covid 19 circumstances. A link to the museum site and location appear below.

Where Did the Camels Go?

By 1866, the Army ended its camel experiment and sold them off.

One factor that contributed to their falling into disfavor — aside from the army’s longtime orientation to mule power — was that the U.S. Secretary of War who authorized the program in 1855 was Jefferson Davis, the eventual president of the Confederacy, and persona non grata thereafter.

There are unsubstantiated accounts that some were simply turned loose into the desert. The last sighting of one of the California camels was in Arizona in 1891.

Visiting Drum Barracks

Drum Barracks Civil War Museum is at 1052 N. Banning Boulevard, Wilmington, California. There’s a free parking lot off Banning, on the west side (2nd photo, above). Wilmington is at the north end of the Port of Los Angeles, about 25 miles south of downtown L.A.

For enthusiasts of the paranormal, there are accounts of mysterious sounds and ghostly apparitions wearing Civil War era attire in the building.

Blogger Shoreacres wrote a series of posts about the Camel Corps in Texas beginning at this link on her blog, The Task at Hand. Extensive research, interesting stories, highly recommended.

Licensable, high resolution versions of some photographs in this post, and select images from other Under Western Skies posts are available on Shutterstock.com. Click on the linked photos, or CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky photo portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2020. I relied on Wikipedia for the majority of the historical detail. Rudolph D’Heureuse photo is public domain, used under open content rules, retrieved from wikipedia.org April 11, 2020.

In a long ago time, my mother would get upset when I used her pinking shears for a non-sewing purpose.

“But, Mom, I have this assignment and I need to construct a model of the national capitol building and I can’t find any regular scissors.”

“Ask your brothers or your sister where they are. I always put the scissors in the drawer where they belong. Don’t use my pinking shears. And stop cutting up cereal boxes that still have cereal in them.”

Pinking?

For some reason, the name of this tool popped into my mind this week. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember (if I ever knew) why those particular scissors were named “pinking,” and just why one needed such an odd implement for sewing.

First things first. If you’re not familiar with them, below is a pair of pinking shears (left) and a regular scissors. Yes — despite that terminal “s” — a scissors or a shears is singular if there’s one object, as far back as we have the word. Like “deer” and other odd words, native speakers know how many of them there are by the article or modifiers: a deer, some scissors, etc.

What Do Pinking Shears Do?

Those triangular serrations on the shears solve a problem common to tailors. If you cut the edge of a piece of woven cloth in a straight line and don’t hem it, the weave unravels.

By making triangular cuts of a zig-zag pattern, pinking shears interrupt the fabric’s tendency to unravel. Typically, pinking shears are heavier than ordinary scissors, in order to cut through thick fabric.

Very Well. Why “Pinking?”

Now the fun begins.

Without belaboring the point, there was a common Middle English word, variously spelled pingen, pinken meaning “to prick” or “to push.” That word made its way into early modern English as “to pink:” to stab or prick, although it’s now mostly obsolete. Today, if you tell someone you’re going to pink them, they might not take you seriously.

The Middle English came from an Old English word (also variously spelled), pyngan, also meaning “to prick” or “to stab.” Without that –an ending, it’s simply the word “pyng” or “pink.”

We’ve had the word in English since at least 895, when King Alfred used it in his translation of Pope Gregory I’s Pastoral Care** from Latin into Old English.

The history of those words go back through Latin pungere (same meaning) and before that to Indo European, at the dawn of language, to a word, *peuk, that means precisely the same thing as that now obsolete sense of “to pink.” From it, we also have innumerable related words including point, punctual, and puncture.

“Pinking” then is stabbing or pricking, in a slightly different sense than merely cutting.

What About “Shears?”

I’m glad you asked. Yes, let’s be thorough.

Again, we’re going back through the language, this time without the Romans. We’ve been using more or less the same word, “shears,” pronounced the same way — although spelled differently — for at least so long as the English language has been recorded.

Middle English had shere, from Old English, where it was written down as scear or sceare. The Old English scribes used an sc to indicate the sh sound: exactly the same word. It first appears in written form in 725 in a Latin glossary (dictionary) as the Old English translation of Latin forfex: “scissors.” Alfred also used the word in Pastoral Care in 895. The same word, intact, across 13 centuries.

At about the same time, ancient versions of German, Teutonic, Dutch and possibly Norwegian had a similar word, all stemming from a prehistoric Indo European word, *sker: “to cut.”

A Step into the Poetic Imagination

As any speaker of another language trying to learn English will tell you, it’s an infuriating language.

Take “shears” or the verb, “shear.” Those words alone have several meanings. Then there’s the homophone, “sheer,” with several entirely unrelated meanings.

Another ancient meaning for that Old English scear is “ploughshare.” That makes sense. A ploughshare shears through sod and soil.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote some of the most remarkable of all English poetry. His poem, “The Windhover” — at least the opening lines — are familiar and oft quoted.

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air ….

The final stanza begins with this all-but-impenetrable phrase:

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion shine.

A sillion is the the line of overturned earth a plough cuts, lifts, turns and leaves behind. Thus, what Hopkins is saying is that even simple (sheer) effort (plod) can result in the shine of light on the curve of earth carved up by the smooth plough blade.

But he does something incredibly clever: He uses the word “sheer,” — homophone for shear — OE scear — which we now know means “ploughshare.”

It’s a pun on modern and ancient English, hidden away by a master.

Do you use pinking shears? Leave a comment.

^**For sticklers, the Latin title of Gregory’s work was Liber Regulae Pastoralis (The Book of the Pastoral Rule), but Alfred named it Pastoral Care, and thus it is in English. Don’t contradict the King.

© Brad Nixon 2020. Photo courtesy J. Nixon, copyright 2020, used by kind consent. Etymology sources: A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, J.R Clark-Hall, Wilder Publications, 2011; The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin, New York 2000; Compact Edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University, 1971; Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary, Cassell & Co. Ltd./Funk & Wagnall’s, 1968.

One common theme at Under Western Skies is that one’s local vicinity has “travel destinations” worth visiting.

We all know that, because we take visitors to see them, wherever it is we live.

In the current (well justified) stay-at-home environment, our “vicinities” are narrowing.

In many parts of the world, “vicinity” means inside one’s own dwelling, perhaps with the exception of seeking medical care or food.

Just before social distancing guidance in the Los Angeles area tightened to a more stringent set of rules, we went for a walk in what few people might consider a picturesque portion of the Port of L.A. Parks and beaches were closed, eliminating some of our favorite casual walks. It is, however, sparsely populated, providing innate “distancing.”

Who — after all —wants to walk through a “neighborhood” that looks like this?

As it happens, we do (or did, and will again).

It’s interesting, if not exactly one of California’s garden spots.

As I wrote in a previous post, that big concrete building is L.A. Municipal Warehouse One.

Built in 1917, having outlived its prime value in the era of containerized freight, Warehouse One is mostly empty. It is, however, on the National Register of Historic Places, and has a fascinating history. Follow the link above to learn more.

Surrounding Warehouse One, all along Signal Street and further upchannel, are a number of even more tatterdemalion structures, like this one, directly across the street from the warehouse.

That vast concrete barn, more than 1,000 feet long, contains what are called transit sheds. When the transit shed structure was built in about 1917, the numerous spaces served as transfer points for individual shipping companies whose goods came out of or went into Warehouse One. From there, they’d be loaded onto ships in the East Channel on the opposite side of the building, or put aboard trains or (mostly horse-drawn) vehicles. In the photo above, you can still see the rails that formerly carried trainloads of freight in and out of the sheds.

Although the building shows a century’s worth of exposure to salt air, it retains the designer’s architectural detailing: fluting on the door jambs, pilasters flanking multipaned windows, repeated over and over.

Commerce still comes and goes from the sheds, although now via internal combustion engine rather than rail or horse-drawn wagons.

Just beyond the sheds, to the north, is another industrial survivor: Berth 57.

Built in the early 1920s to house freight in- or outbound to the berth on the East Channel (left of the photo), the corrugated metal cladding gives the old structure a derelict appearance, but it’s there to protect the underlying concrete building from the very elements that are rusting the painted metal.

Again, at least a few stylistic fillips: a concrete cornice is still visible.

Still sound, no mere derelict, Berth 57 has a future. It’s to be the headquarters of AltaSea, a public-private oceanic research and development organization. Here’s how the architects envision Berth 57’s reincarnation.

We’re by the Port, Let’s Get Some Fish

A few hundred yards farther north is a historic site, although the present structure dates from only 1951: The Los Angeles Wholesale Fish Market.

There’s been a fish market there along the main channel since about 1915, during the boom days of tuna and mackerel fishing and canning in the port.

Where Are the Fishing Boats?

Next stop, SP Slip, a long channel that’s a mooring for fishing boats and the occasional tugboat.

The photographer’s standing on what would’ve been mud flats in 1852, where an entrepreneur named Augustus Timm established a wharf to unload one of the principal cargoes then arriving not only in Los Angeles, but at ports all along the southern California coast: lumber. San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and other growing settlements needed large quantities of lumber not available in the arid environment.

Later, Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) built a ship-to-rail terminal and the former Timm’s Landing was converted to its current configuration. Today, it’s the home of some of the port’s fishing fleet. The railroad no longer runs there, but it’s still known as the SP Slip.

Here, at least, the picturesque. Fishing buoys and piles of netting:

Crab traps:

Boats equipped with fishing gear all but incomprehensible to this landlubber.

Forward … to the Moderne

At the head of the channel is a building that houses the Los Angeles Maritime Institute and a restaurant.

Judging from the style — a hint of Art Moderne — it’s apparently nearly 100 years old, but I’ve been unable to date it accurately. It was originally the headquarters of the port’s Fishermen’s Co-op, and has outlived its founding organization.

In one week since the most recent harbor walk, the scope of our rambles has shrunk, but that’s why we have memory, after all. Meanwhile, we’re all planning for the first place we’ll go once we see one another through. Wash your hands. Stay in touch with people.

Visiting the Neighborhood

This walk visited a rather out-of-the-way portion of Los Angeles, far from the beaches, theme parks, downtown or Hollywood. It’s along the western edge of the port, in San Pedro. Drive south from downtown on the Harbor Freeway, exit onto Gaffey Street and consult your map from there.

This arial view shows the southern end of the walk, looking south.

Here’s some detail of our approximately two-mile walk.

Places mentioned in this post in red.

Leave a comment when you need more detailed directions. For the time being, I’m sticking closer to home.

© Brad Nixon 2020. LA Fish Warehouse photo © M. Vincent 2020, used by kind permission. AltaSea Berth 57 elevation © Dangermond Keane Architecture. Aerial view © AltaSea, retrieved 4/8/20 from altasea.org. Map © Google with my emendations.