Your privacy is important to us. The Los Angeles Conservancy has adopted this Privacy Policy to explain why we collect particular information and how we protect your privacy.  This page describes our information gathering and dissemination policies for the website located at www.laconservancy.org. By visiting this website, you accept the practices described in this Privacy […]

Throughout the 1980s, much of the Los Angeles basin and San Fernando Valley were being built out. Open agricultural land and undeveloped hillsides had once offered a blank slate for development; in the 1980s the emphasis of development shifted to the challenge of infill projects, additions, redevelopment for denser uses, and preservation. Yet even the […]

Cruising down today’s Ventura Boulevard at 45 miles per hour, it’s difficult to imagine its dusty beginnings as a stretch of El Camino Real, the old dirt road that once connected each of the California Missions. Even beyond this centuries-old pedigree, this 16-mile route is rich with twentieth-century San Fernando Valley lore and fascinating architecture to […]

As an architect, architecture critic, historian, author, educator, and preservationist, Hess has elevated the roadside and commercial architecture of post-World War II to its rightful place in the canon of architectural history. He has done so by taking seriously the hidden, forgotten, neglected, and unsung places that helped define postwar living.  Coffee shops, ranch houses, […]