Events Calendar

Welcome to the Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society Calendar. We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.

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HANCOCK PARK – Book Presentation and signing 7:00 pm
HANCOCK PARK – Book Presentation and signing
Dec 16 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
HANCOCK PARK - Book Presentation and signing
Larchmont Chronicle pioneer and historical society co-founder, Jane Gilman has written a book about what she knows best, Hancock Park. She puts Hancock Park into the palm of your hand with ease and grace. This…
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Jan
13
Wed
An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles
Jan 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

The map may not be the territory, and the word may not be the thing, but An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles is as close as it gets.

Originally authored over fifty years ago by renowned architectural historians Robert Winter—described by Los Angeles Magazine as both the “spiritual godfather” and “father” of L.A. architecture—and the late, great David Gebhard, this seminal vade mecum of Los Angeles architecture explores every rich potency of the often relentless, but sometimes—as captured here—relenting L.A. city scape.

Windsor Square Hancock Park
Historical Society

In association with

Angel City Press

Presents

An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles

by David Gebhard and Robert Winter
revised and updated by Robert Inman and Robert Winter
Foreword by Nathan Masters

with speaker

Robert Inman

Please join us on
Wednesday, January 13th at 7:00pm

For our speaker series with the Robert Inman as he takes us on a virtual tour of our city.

Tickets
$45 for an autographed copy of the book which will be delivered by Angel City Press directly to the customer. Click here to purchase.
$10 for the presentation only

More than an effort of exploration, the guide is an outfit of discovery. The much-anticipated revision, long since a classic standard of the Los Angeles architecture, has been updated rigorously with more than 200 new entries cataloging every crease, region, and style of Los Angeles County’s metropolitan sheath, from the missions of Spanish California to present day.

An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles has always been a live-wire read, equal parts thorough and informational, written with a rich, droll tone of vim and vigor tempered by relentlessly honest opinions. Dilettantes and experts, practitioners and students, aficionados and osmotic natives alike: all are blood type-compatible with this tongue-in-cheek critical reference for architecture enthusiasts. Enjoy your transfusion.

Feb
17
Wed
Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir @ Virtual Event
Feb 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

And

Angel City Press

present

Bunker Hill Los Angeles:
Essence of Sunshine and Noir
by Nathan Marsak

Please join us February 17th at 7:00pm

As compelling as the story of the destruction of Bunker Hill is its people who made the Hill at once desirable and undesirable. Marsak commemorates the poets and writers, artists and activists, little guys and big guys, and of course, the many architects who built and rebuilt the community on the Hill—time after historic time.

Any fan of American architecture will treasure Marsak’s analysis of buildings that have crowned the Hill: the exuberance of Victorian shingle and spindlework, from Mission to Modern, from Queen Anne to Frank Gehry, Bunker Hill has been home to it all, the ever-changing built environment.

With more than 150 photographs—many in color—as well as maps and vintage ephemera to tell his dramatic visual story, Marsak lures us into Bunker Hill Los Angeles and shares its lost world, then guides us to its new one.

Mar
17
Wed
CLUBHOUSE TURN, THE TWILIGHT OF HOLLYWOOD PARK RACE TRACK @ Virtual Event
Mar 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

On December 22, 2013, the world-famous Hollywood Park Race Track closed its doors forever. In 2014, demolition began on the landmark race track, effectively erasing seventy-five years of history, while at the same time making space for an entire new neighborhood to suddenly arise in the middle of the metropolis. Photographer Michele Asselin spent every day at Hollywood Park in the last two weeks before it closed, photographing the buildings, the employees, and the patrons of the track. Clubhouse Turn: The Twilight of Hollywood Park Race Track is the product of her efforts, and the story of two cultures colliding in the middle of a rapidly evolving city.

$50 Autographed hardcover book from Angel City Press

*$10 Presentation only  – Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
*$15 Presentation only  – Non Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)

*Once you purchase your ticket you will be taken to a page with your zoom link to the event . That is your invite. Yay! Please bookmark that page, print that page or save that link as we will not be emailing out the zoom link.

 

Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

And

Angel City Press

present

Clubhouse Turn: The Twilight of Hollywood Park Race Track 
By Michelle Asselin

Please join us MARCH 17th at 7:00pm


Apr
21
Wed
Master Architects of Southern California 1920-1940: Paul R. Williams  @ Virtual Event
Apr 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Please join us on April 21, 2021, 7pm.
Paul Revere Williams’s inspirational story has fascinated historians for the simple fact that his journey was so improbable. The orphan son of an African American fruit-and-vegetable merchant, he was repeatedly told he had no chance of ever realizing his childhood dream of becoming an architect. And yet, he ignored the naysayers to reach the pinnacle of his chosen profession, while overcoming widespread discrimination throughout early- to mid-twentieth century America. The odds against him succeeding were enormous.

$60 Hardcover copy of the book from Angel City Press

*$10 Presentation only  – Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
*$15 Presentation only  – Non Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)


*
Once you purchase your ticket you will be taken to a page with your zoom link to the event . That is your invite. Yay! Please bookmark that page, print that page or save that link as we will not be emailing out the zoom link.

Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

And

Angel City Press

Present

Master Architects of Southern California 1920-1940: Paul R. Williams

by Marc Appleton,  Stephen Gee, and Bret Parsons

April 21, 2021, 7pm

Master Architects of Southern California 1920-1940, a new twelve-volume series by Marc Appleton and Bret Parsons showcases the work of the Golden Era’s most important residential architects as originally featured in the earliest issues of The Architectural Digest. Featuring some of the earliest known photographs of the work of legendary architects, the series is devoted to the era when oil titans, film industry moguls, bankers, and successful entrepreneurs who were new to the region hired the most accomplished and talented architects they could find.

May
12
Wed
Judson: Innovation in Stained Glass @ Virtual Event
May 12 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Please join us on May 12, 2021 at 7pm.
Five generations of Judsons have worked with artists, architects, and designers to create Old World-style stained glass whose quality and craftsmanship has often been compared to the work of Louis Tiffany. Famed for its Craftsman glass, Judson arts-and-crafts era windows have been celebrated by experts in the field for decades. Judson’s work with Frank Lloyd Wright on Hollyhock House in the 1920s was recently re-saluted when the house was named to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. Established in Pasadena during the heyday of the Arroyo Culture, headquarters of Judson Studios are still housed in the original Craftsman-era home and studio of patriarch William Lees Judson.

*$10 Presentation only  – Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
*$15 Presentation only  – Non Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
$76 Presentation and hardcover book including shipping, Member price.
$81 Presentation and hardcover book including shipping, Non-Member price.

*After your purchase you will be emailed the special presentation link by 6pm the day before the presentation and by 12pm on the day of the presentation.

Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

And

Angel City Press

Present

Judson: Innovation in Stained Glass

by David Judson

May 12, 2021 at 7pm

JUDSON: Innovation in Stained Glass by David Judson and Steffie Nelson is a history of the world-renowned family of artisans who began crafting stained glass windows in Los Angeles in 1897.

May
26
Wed
VIRTUAL HOME TOUR 303 N. JUNE ST. @ Virtual Event
May 26 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
VIRTUAL HOME TOUR 303 N. JUNE ST. @ Virtual Event

Wednesday May 26th at 7:00 PM. A prime Hancock Park 1927 Mediterranean Revival Architectural Masterpiece has been fully renovated, restored, decorated and enhanced into its present pristine  condition by the legendary design firm of Ron Wilson Interiors and its owner, Joseph Guidera as his personal residence.  This distinctive estate has all the hallmarks of a truly unique and special property: built in the 1920s for a direct descendant of Los Angeles oldest original Spanish land grant holding families, designed for large-scale entertaining and yet with many smaller intimate personal spaces in a grand period revival style by noted architects, constructed by a local well know builder of most prestigious luxury homes of the era, and now restored to all of its former glory.

$25 Member price
(Pay Below with a small Paypal fee)*
$35 Non-member price (Pay Below with a small Paypal fee)*
*After your purchase you will be emailed the special presentation link by 6pm the day before the presentation and by 12pm on the day of the presentation.

Wednesday May 26th at 7:00 PM

The Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

presents its first

History and Virtual Home Tour of 330 N. June Street

Featuring an interview and guided tour through this historic property by President Richard Battaglia and home owner Joseph Guidera followed by question and answer period with Mr. Guidera.

Patrick J. Watson was born in 1876 to his parents, Colonel James Alexander Watson of Scotland and Maria Dolores Dominguez on the old Manual Dominguez Rancho, which encompasses much of present day cities of Torrance, Wilmington, Compton, Carson, San Pedro and the South Bay area of Los Angeles. This was the first Spanish land grant in CA from King Carlos of Spain. Patrick Watson was the vice president of the Watson Land Co and in 1923, he sold his share of the original Rancho property to The Pan American Oil Company which was a subsidiary of the Doheny Company. In the mid-1920s, Patrick Watson & his wife, Miss Mamie O’Farrell of San Francisco, were looking to move off of the original Rancho property and decided to build a new home for themselves in the fashionable and developing area of Hancock Park.

Patrick hired the notable Architectural firm of Hunt & Burns to design his new family estate on a large double access lot located on a prominent corner in the new district of Hancock Park.  During their tenure together, Sumner P. Hunt and Silas R. Burns built some of the most beautiful buildings in the Los Angeles area including:  Automobile Club of Southern California, Headquarters – 1921-1923, Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles – 1910, The Wilshire – Ebell Club, Clubhouse – 1926-1927, Los Angeles Public Library, Vermont Square Branch – 1913, McKinley House, Lafayette Park, Los Angeles, CA – 1917, Scripps College, Claremont, CA – 1929, The Los Angeles Tennis Club – 1927 and The Wilshire Country Club – 1919.

For his new home, Patrick Watson would enlist the services of the Sweden-born master builder C.J. Nordquist who had a well-deserved reputation for building some of the grandest homes and public buildings in Los Angeles.

 

Jul
7
Wed
Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places Can Transform America’s Cities
Jul 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

July 7th at 7:00pm. Ken Bernstein, the City Planner for the City of Los Angeles and a national advocate for historic preservation shares how Los Angeles has led the nation in historic preservation and shares how other cities can do the same.

Los Angeles has an image as the “City of the Future”―a city always at the cutting edge of change―but also as a “throwaway metropolis” that cares little about its history or architectural legacy. Yet the reality is quite different. Over the past decade, the City of Los Angeles has developed one of the most successful historic preservation programs in the nation, culminating with the completion of the nation’s most ambitious citywide survey of historic resources.

*$10 Presentation only  – Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
*$15 Presentation only  – Non Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
$66 Presentation and hardcover book including shipping, Member price (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
$71 Presentation and hardcover book including shipping, Non-Member price (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
*After your purchase you will be emailed the special presentation link by 6pm the day before the presentation and by 12pm on the day of the presentation.

Windsor Square Hancock Park Historic Society

Presents

Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places Can Transform America’s Cities

by Ken Bernstein

July 7th at 7:00pm

All across the city, historic preservation is now transforming Los Angeles, while also pointing the way to how other cities can use preservation to revitalize their neighborhoods and build community. Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places Can Transform America’s Cities, authored by Ken Bernstein, who oversees Los Angeles’ Office of Historic Resources, tells this under-appreciated L.A. story: how historic preservation has been transforming neighborhoods, creating a Downtown renaissance, and guiding the future of the city.

While it is younger than many East Coast cities, Los Angeles has a remarkable collection of architectural resources in all styles, reflecting the legacy of notable architects from the past 150 years. As one of the most diverse cities in the world, Los Angeles is also breaking new ground in its approach to historic preservation, extending beyond the preservation of significant architecture, to also identify and protect the places of social and cultural meaning to all of Los Angeles’s communities. Preserving Los Angelesilluminates a Los Angeles that will surprise even longtime Angelenos―highlighting dozens of lesser-known buildings, neighborhoods, and places in every corner of the city that have been “found” by SurveyLA, the first-ever city-wide survey of Los Angeles’ historic resources. The text is richly illustrated through images by a prominent architectural photographer, Stephen Schafer. Preserving Los Angeles is an authoritative chronicle of Los Angeles’ urban transformation― and a useful guide for citizens and urban practitioners nationally seeking to draw lessons for their own cities.

Aug
25
Wed
Better Luck Next Time @ Virtual Event
Aug 25 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

August 25th, 7:00 PM. Do you want to read something funny?  Let’s say, a novel set at a divorce ranch in Reno in the 1930s?  A book with memorably eccentric characters, sparkling dialogue, a satisfying plot twist, and some romance and sex?  A feel-good literary comedy/western?  Here it is, then, the book you’ve been looking for: Julia Claiborne Johnson’s Better Luck Next Time.”— author of Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement

The eagerly anticipated second novel from the bestselling author of Be Frank with Me, a charming story of endings, new beginnings, and the complexities and complications of friendship and love, set in late 1930s Reno.
$10 Presentation only  – Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)*
$15 Presentation only  – Non Members (Pay Below with small Paypal fee)
*
$31.74 Better Luck Next Time book signed by author Julia Claiborne Johnson – Available for pick up at Chevalier’s Bookstore or shipped for an additional $6
*After your purchase you will be emailed the special presentation link by 6pm the day before the presentation and by 12pm on the day of the presentation.

The Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

presents

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

with author Julia Claiborne Johnson

Please join us WEDNESDAY August 25th, 7:00 PM

It’s 1938 and women seeking a quick, no-questions split from their husbands head to the “divorce capital of the world,” Reno, Nevada. There’s one catch: they have to wait six weeks to become “residents.” Many of these wealthy, soon-to-be divorcees flock to the Flying Leap, a dude ranch that caters to their every need.

Twenty-four-year-old Ward spent one year at Yale before his family lost everything in the Great Depression; now he’s earning an honest living as a ranch hand at the Flying Leap. Admired for his dashing good looks—“Cary Grant in cowboy boots”—Ward thinks he’s got the Flying Leap’s clients all figured out. But two new guests are about to upend everything he thinks he knows: Nina, a St Louis heiress and amateur pilot back for her third divorce, and Emily, whose bravest moment in life was leaving her cheating husband back in San Francisco and driving herself to Reno.

A novel about divorce, marriage, and everything that comes in between (money, class, ambition, and opportunity), Better Luck Next Time is a hilarious yet poignant examination of the ways friendship can save us, love can destroy us, and the family we create can be stronger than the family we come from.

Aug
29
Sun
A GARDEN PARTY
Aug 29 @ 4:00 pm – 7:30 pm
A GARDEN PARTY

On Sunday, August 29th at 4:00 you are invited to A Garden Party at the home of June Bilgore, 355 S. Windsor Blvd, Windsor Square. It is our Annual Meeting which usually takes place in June of each year. We had to pass over 2020 because of Covid but we are now back in the swing of things. This will be our first live event since February of 2020. This year our garden party will honor Captain Shannon Paulson of the Wilshire Division Police who, after years of watching over the Hancock Park area will be moving to a higher position within the Los Angeles Police Department. Her successor will also be present to be introduced to the neighborhood.

SUNDAY AUGUST 29, 2021

355 S. WINDSOR BLVD, WINDSOR SQUARE

SOLD OUT

I am happy to announce our special guest speaker will be Alison Martino who created the online community Vintage Los Angeles. Alison has over two million followers daily being delighted by her trivia and nuances on growing up in Los Angeles. Daughter of the late popular singer and actor, Al Martino, Alison has been dubbed the “Godmother Of Los Angeles.” since her father played a prominent role in the movie, The Godfather as singer Johnny Fontane. Alison will be charming us with her colorful memories and interesting tidbits of growing up in the City Of The Angels.

For more information on Alison go to http://alisonmartino.com/

 

Price includes dinner and refreshments.

Tickets: Member Price $55.             Non-Member price $65.
SOLD OUT

Sep
18
Sat
Mansions, Moguls & Movie Stars Twilight Tour
Sep 18 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Mansions, Moguls & Movie Stars Twilight Tour

September 18, 5pm to 7pm. Please join us on a fascinating twilight walk through of historic Windsor Square on September 18th from 5:00 to 7:00. Explore the architecture and learn about the current and former residents of this beautiful area right in the center of Los Angeles. This is the second in our new series of walks around Windsor Square and Hancock park with Eleanor Schrader and Bret Parsons. Wear comfortable shoes. You won’t want to miss this.

This event has been SOLD OUT.

Member $50. Non-member $60 (You may pay below with a small Paypal fee)

The Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society

presents

Mansions, Moguls & Movie Stars Twilight Tour

with Eleanor Schrader & Bret Parsons

Please join us September 18th, 2021,  5:00pm – 7:00pm

Refreshments will be Served

Eleanor Schrader is an award-winning educator, lecturer, and author.  She lectures worldwide on the history of architecture, interiors, and decorative arts and leads art and architecture tours throughout the world.  She has been named a Distinguished Instructor of design history at UCLA Extension.  She is also Professor Emeritus of Art and Architectural History at Santa Monica College. She has done graduate work in fine and decorative arts at Sotheby’s Institute in London and New York and has served as Design Review Commissioner for the City of Beverly Hills. She is co-author of “Master Architects of Southern California, 1920-1940: Wallace Neff”.

Bret Parsons has written five books, including Colcord Home (2008), the biography of the beloved Southern California architect Gerard Colcord. He is the co-author of books on Paul R. Williams, Roland E.Coate, Gordan B. Kaufmann, and Wallace Neff among others in the Master Architects of Southern California 1920-1940s published by Angel City Press. A residential Realtor, he founded Bret Parsons Real Estate in 2008. He is the founder and executive director of the architectural division of Compass. Bret resides in Los Angeles.