Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Many Downtowns bus tour September 20, 2008

The second installment in Esotouric’s ongoing Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles architecture series is an ambitious and provocative bus and walking tour which sets out to provide a good overview of downtown Los Angeles in the beginning of the 21st century by tracing the neighborhoods’ roots and slow decline leading up to the current boom.

Downtown LA was depopulated fifty years ago by a series of decisions at the highest levels of local government. Now, in a seemingly overnight rebirth (actually ten+ years in the making), new residents are filling formerly commercial structures and new businesses are arriving. Where the old and new downtown meet, a thin red line runs, mapping out the desire lines of two sets of opposing forces. But the story is more complex and more interesting than the cartoon of Skid Row Crackhead versus Loft-Dwelling Yuppie, and this tour exists to put the many unique downtown communities into historical and cultural perspective.

Our tour begins in the corporate public spaces of Bunker Hill and Pershing Square, each the result of deliberate social engineering (the razing of old Bunker Hill; the elimination of green space that could be used to hide vice). We segue to the underappreciated yet extremely successful public spaces of the Historic Core and then to the emerging live/work community of The Old Bank District, where developer Tom Gilmore’s gentrification and the popular monthly Art Walk are bringing life to spaces which have been dead for decades. We’ll explore the fascinating history of the rag trade in Los Angeles, with a spin around the thriving Fashion District under the direction of Urban Adventures own Christine Silvestri . The tour concludes in the DIY loft spaces of the Arts District for a reception in the studio of celebrated downtown painter Emmeric Konrad.

Having studied under architecture critic Reyner Banham in the mid-1980s, tour host Richard Schave has taken it upon himself to correct his teacher’s gross oversight of downtown Los Angeles, relegated to a dismissive coda in his seminal Los Angeles guidebook Los Angeles: A Study of Four Ecologies.. Richard and his wife Kim Cooper work extensively with the history and lost cultures of downtown in their bus tours, in their work for Art Walk, on blogs including On Bunker Hill and 1947project, and through public lectures on the subject.

This tour has a significant walking component, down the stairs along Angels Flight, around Pershing Square, through several other pedestrian locations. It is broken up, but please be advised to be ready to stretch your legs.

Locations on the tour include:

Grand Central Market
Title Guarantee Building (including its landmark Hugo Ballin murals)
Angels Flight
Santee Alley

This tour will include refreshments in Emmeric's studio at the end of the tour. Bringing a sandwich or bag lunch along as well is recommended.

Official Website: http://www.esotouric.com/manydowntowns