Pattison remembers that when he was a child, “downtown was where everybody went to go shopping. The flagship department stores were there. The sidewalks were thick with people. We’d go to Broadway to look at the Christmas windows at Bullocks, the May Company, Robinson’s, and we would stop at one of the Clifton’s to warm up. We went to all the movie theatres. My parents would go to the movies two or three times a week.”

There was talk of tearing down Bunker Hill as early as the 1920s,” says Pattison, noting that the area was “low income, but not derelict.” He describes the residents of the Bunker Hill he knew as comprised largely of single people, artists, writers, and the elderly poor, constituencies that were easy for the powers-that-be to overlook.

“It was obvious what was going to happen to Bunker Hill; it was just a question of when,” he says. “The CRA (Community Redevelopment Act) was created to remove substandard housing, and to replace it with newer housing.”

In theory, he says, the people who were moved out of the older units were to be allowed to move back to the new housing, but in practice, “(the city) got approval to tear it down without a formal plan about what would be built,” and, after years of parcels remaining unused and vacant, eventually big corporate office spaces replaced the old homes.

By the early 1960s, the City took over Bunker Hill properties via eminent domain, razing most of them.  The Castle and Salt Box, which were both designated Historic-Cultural Monuments, were briefly spared by being moved to Heritage Square, but were soon destroyed in an arson fire in 1969.

“Most of the reputation (of Bunker Hill being seedy and/or haunted) comes out of the noir movies of the 1940s to early 1960s,” Pattison says, adding that the Castle was featured in the film Kiss Me Deadly, released when he was nine years old. “It was like having a movie star in our family.” He recalls climbing up to the top of the Castle to watch the sunset, and seeing the lights come on at the Richfield Building. “(The demolition of) the Richfield building was a travesty. That building was pristine when they tore it down.”

Why does Dr. Pattison support the Conservancy as a member? “The Los Angeles Conservancy plays a role in reminding not only what was there before, but what mistakes have been made, so we don’t make those mistakes again.” He states, “when you sever the relationship between history and place, you lose a sense of who you are. We may not be the genetic descendants of the people who lived here before, but we are the civic descendants. It is our duty to preserve what they bequeathed to us. Any like-minded person absolutely owes it to those of us who are here and those who follow to join the Conservancy and support this effort.”