 Welcome. My name is Angela Scott, and I am the library assistant here in the Billie Jean King Main Library's Miller Special Collections Room. On behalf of our Senior Librarian of Collection Services, Jade Wheeler, our Special Collections Librarian, Jeff Whalen, and all the staff here at the Long Beach Public Library, I'd like to welcome you to this next online event of the Miller Room's Architecture and Historic Preservation Lecture Series celebrating the history and culture of Long Beach and our surrounding regions and our architecture. All right, so today we're pleased to bring you a fascinating program entitled Exploring our Historic Districts, Efficient Single Family Homes and Neighborhoods in 1920s Long Beach, presented by Sam and Linda Draga from Long Beach Heritage. This is one of a series of programs that will be featured periodically in the Miller Room throughout the year. In addition to our local history lecture series, our spoken words, spoken art series, our art of nature lecture series, poetry and fiction writing workshops, Miller Room Book Club and short story reading group, art programming, music performances, and much more. So please keep an eye on our LBPL calendar and website for upcoming events, and we hope you'll join us again for more of these special programs as they become available. Now, while we have you all here, we'd like to also mention some upcoming Miller Room programming for March. On Saturday, March 20th from 2.30 to 4pm, please join us for our next Miller Room Book Club meeting. We'll be reading the 1997 fiction bestseller Memoirs of Agatia by Arthur Golden, which also spawned a film adaptation. Our Miller Room Book Club reads a rotating selection of fiction and nonfiction books as well as short stories that generally, the focus generally on themes pertaining to the Miller Room study topics and special collections, relating to the arts and performing arts, Asian culture and heritage, local and California history, libraries and archives and much more. So this book club is currently meeting online via Zoom and pre-registration RSVPs are necessary. So for more information to join the Miller Room Book Club's email list, you can message me in the live chat after our program today. If you have more questions, call the main library for more information or visit our LBPL website at www.LBPL.org. I'd also like to mention our next big Art of Nature lecture series event on Saturday, March 27th from 3 to 4pm. This program is entitled Nature Journaling, Getting Started. Yes. And if you have your audio on, please mute it. Thank you. And this presentation will be presented by local naturalist, artist and photographer Kim Moore. The presentation will talk about what nature journaling is, the art and practice of it, and Kim will share her experiences as well as provide tips about tools and materials, techniques and inspiration for how to start nature journaling on your own. So again, please keep an eye on your website and calendar to sign up for the Zoom program. It will be going up on our website next week for advanced signups and stay tuned for other Miller Room programs that will be rolling out in the next few months. And then finally, the Long Beach Public Library has also begun a new 50 book challenge for 2021. If you've made a resolution to read more books in the new year, this is a great way to do it. So check out our website again at www.LBPL.org to learn more and have fun reading, earning prizes and checking goals off your list. Now, getting back to our program for today. It is our pleasure to once again welcome and introduce our featured speakers this afternoon, Sam and Linda Draga from Long Beach Heritage. Linda is a retired speech language pathologist and Sam is a retired professor of technical writing. They moved to Long Beach from Lubbock, Texas in 2012 and joined Long Beach Heritage soon thereafter. They immersed themselves in their new city's history and its stunning architecture and volunteered to serve as guides for the monthly walking tours of the historic buildings in the downtown and East Village neighborhoods. With the walking tours and suspension during the pandemic right now, they've concentrated their efforts on developing presentations about the city's 18 historic districts to share with the public. Now in today's program, Sam and Linda will be exploring the architectural history and preservation of some intriguing historic districts in the city, specifically highlighting two special neighborhoods that capture a popular architectural style and reflect changing homeowner needs that evolved within 1920s oil boom in Long Beach. And at the end of our program if there's time we'll also have a Q&A that will be moderating through our chat. So if you have any questions, please type them into the chat bar. You'll see a chat button at the bottom of your screen and you can type and submit your questions there. And then Sam and Linda will answer questions as time permits. The program will officially end at 4pm if you need to leave, but you're welcome to stay and continue asking questions via chat until about 415. We'll also be sending out an email soon with a link to the archived video recording of this program so you can watch it later at your leisure. Finally, just a reminder that we are recording this program today so we are disabling people's video during the program and you'll be able to see the presentation as you know, we just won't be able to see you. But if you're having difficulty with your audio or video, please let us know in the chat so we can try to assist you with that remotely. So, thank you again for joining us today, everyone. And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the Miller Room is very pleased to present our special guests, Sam and Linda Draga from Long Beach Heritage. Thank you again. Thank you, Angela. And thank you all for joining us today. Yes, good afternoon. First, let us tell you a little bit about Long Beach Heritage, which is a nonprofit education and advocacy group promoting public knowledge and the preservation of significant historical and architectural resources, neighborhoods and the multicultural heritage of Long Beach. Our goal is to reach many, many different audiences. So we help community members identify historic places and architecturally significant structures in their neighborhoods and recognize that these are adaptable to reuse with sensitive modification to changing needs. We reach out to students, elementary school, junior high, high school, college students. We accept interns. We want to spread the word about architecture, the importance of historic buildings, what they contribute to a rich environment. We also help owners recognize their property's historic value, appreciate its attributes, and understand that appropriate modifications both interior and exterior are possible, and also learn about incentives that might be available to landmark property owners. We also help public officials in supporting the enactment and implementation of effective preservation incentives, and in promoting preservation as a vital service to the public good. We help architects to add successful adaptive reuse projects to their portfolios and encourage this and inform their clients of the environmental and cultural benefits of preservation, and to apply incentives that encourage adaptive reuse of potential landmark properties. And we help realtors highlight the attributes that would make a property a potential landmark and instruct their potential buyers of the rules and regulations regarding landmark properties and develop a working knowledge of the tax and fee incentives associated with properties in historic districts. We started to help visitors to learn more about Long Beach's history and its structures. And actually, we were visitors. We started out as visitors who took a tour, and we learned that Long Beach Heritage was willing to train new tour guides, and we thought, well, this is how we can learn a little bit more about our new city. We hadn't ever lived in California, much less Long Beach, so it was all new for us. And Long Beach Heritage operates the historic Bembridge House, which is a stunning Queen Anne Victorian style house, highly ornate, probably the best example of Victorian architecture in the city of Long Beach in a residential building. It offers guided walking tours of historic and architecturally important buildings and neighborhoods, and it supports the quarterly meetings of the city's 18 historic districts. This is a map that shows all 18 of the districts. You'll notice that some, I want to point, and I know you can't see me pointing, some of these districts are tiny, tiny, while others are quite large. There are two that have been circled, two of the tiniest districts. Those are the ones that we will be talking about today in particular. Those two districts are particularly notable because they are all small houses, close to being tiny homes in some cases, and they're both in the style of Spanish revival, which was very popular during their period of significance when they were being built. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the average house being built for returning soldiers and their families in the U.S. was 1,000 square feet. And in spite of a decrease in the average size of a family by 1978, the average American house was 1,780 square feet, and by 2009 it was 2,700 square feet. Increasing incomes and increasing amounts of material possessions were the drivers of this growth in house size. It wasn't growth in family size. And the small house architectural and social movement is gaining attention across the world and the United States. It advocates a return to living simply in small houses of less than 1,000 square feet. Now advocates for small houses cite many benefits. Demonstrates financial prudence, possibly freeing funds for other activities because you have a modest investment in your house. It offers affordability. There's less to operate and maintain. It allows wider diversity of ownership. It's more affordable for more people. It provides shared community experiences. Homes are separate, but they're also closer together. So it's more likely that you will meet your neighbors and interact with your neighbors. And it alleviates the housing crunch in urban settings. And it corrects consumer consumption driven mindsets. And it encourages efficient use of space and energy and contributes to a healthier environment. Brenner Place and Mcnerva Park Place are two districts that since the 1920s have provided the opportunity for individuals or couples to enjoy the benefits of living in small houses. Now this opportunity is really true of the homes in many of the historic districts. Remember that today's small home was the average home size for most people back in those days. What is particularly true of Brenner Place is it was smaller than the average home of that time. And we also want to mention that home ownership itself was something that was not characteristic for the majority of Americans. In the earliest census figures from the 1890s where housing was an issue that was part of the census, it indicated that about 47% of Americans owned their own home. And after World War I, that number had actually shrunk to about 43%. And the United States federal government through the Department of Labor after World War I activated this very dramatic public relations effort to encourage people to own their own homes. There were posters, there were flyers, there were education campaigns, there were buttons given out to school children that said, you know, I live in my own home. And that effort in 1921 was transferred to the Department of Commerce and Herbert Hoover was the leader of this effort to get more and more people into homes. So through the 1920s, the number of Americans who lived in their own homes rose from 43% to 47%. Still a minority of Americans living in their own homes. It wouldn't be until after World War II that the majority of Americans owned their own homes. The number hits about 60% in the 1960s. It hits the high 67, 68% in the 1990s, but it's never been higher than that. And at this point in the 1920s, most people don't own their own homes. So the Brenner Place Historic District was built in 1923. It's one block long, and it includes addresses that face both Alamedas Avenue and Brenner Place. And the original building permit was for nine houses, each costing $3,000. Today there are more. $3,000. Now, in 1920, the average income for a California citizen was $3,348. So for less than the annual income, you could purchase a house on Brenner Place. In 1923, modest housing was in demand, and many people didn't own cars yet. And Spanish revival architecture was very popular. Come on, turn it down a little. I can hardly hear my show. The builder of Brenner Place was Charles M. Steinbrenner. He was married to Margaret. He served initially in Long Beach as vice president of loans at Security Funding Company on American Avenue. But by 1927 was established exclusively as a real estate developer, and he would leave Long Beach by 1929. Now, we know all of this about Steinbrenner because of the city directories which are available through the Long Beach Public Library. They list not only names and addresses, but occupations. Now, as we've said, Steinbrenner was responding to this urgent need for additional modest housing. He erected these individual homes at the same time in a layout that is very similar to courtyard housing. Courtyard housing was very, very popular at this time in Southern California. The courtyard housing was really apartments. They were connected. There was an area between the homes that was meant for pedestrians. It was a pedestrian walkway, and people could enter their home through the pedestrian walkway side, or there were usually little back doors as well. You can see that this model is somewhat like that, except that it's not attached to apartments, it's separate homes. And you can't tell, but it's not a pedestrian walkway between the homes. It's actually a street. Now, it's a narrow street. It's only 15, what is it? 1500? 15 feet wide. 15 feet wide. It was enough for a car to pass through. So Steinbrenner was acknowledging that there were automobiles in Long Beach at that point, but it was still pretty narrow. Courtyard housing was rental property primarily, and what he was building were individual homes. And before we shift, also, I want to point out that this was an infill project. Yes. The two neighborhoods that we're talking about today were infill. Long Beach was much larger and was much more sprawling at this point. So this wasn't expansion on the edge of town. This was making use of land, being efficient, making use of land that had not been developed before this point. Brinner Place here is just east of Alameda's Avenue, just north of 7th Street and just south of Hellman Street. That private road, here you see it, again, approximately 15 feet wide, and it is still to this day a private road. Parking is allowed only on the south side of the street. And city directories from the 1920s indicate that this was often transitional housing for couples and single women, including widows, with a 40 to 50% turnover from year to year. So people would buy their house and then it would turn over very quickly. Residents enjoyed various occupations. There were sales clerks, painters, bank tellers, street car conductors, mechanics, carpenters, financiers, insurance agents, oil workers, all of these people from all different occupations living and working together on the same street. The lot for each home was approximately 32 by 50. But this figure includes the sidewalk and a portion of that private road. So each homeowner owned the sidewalk in front of their home and a portion of the private road in front of their home. So the space available for the actual dwelling was much smaller. There was no planting strip between the sidewalk and the curb and each home was nearly flush with the street. So there's a very shallow setback here of three to five feet from the sidewalk. Now you see the gate we are looking at right now is the gate to a little walkway that goes between each of the homes. So you can see that's how far apart the homes are. So it's tight. One thing that there is a little bit of land connected with with these properties a little bit on the side yards a little bit behind a little bit next to the stairway. And this is when we begin to talk about what it's like to move from an apartment into a tiny home or a small home, but it's like for the resident. I talked with some of the residents who live at Brenner. One of them said our family has been able to start a vegetable garden. We never had an outdoor space of our own before. Very important to them. So this is a raised bed that is adjacent to their house on the outside. 750 Alameda Avenue is the only dwelling with a driveway. Go figure. In 1915 Panama, California exhibition in San Diego it reawakened interest in Spanish colonial architecture and Spanish colonial revival became one of the most popular styles during the Long Beach building boom of the 1920s. And the homes of Brenner Place were Spanish revival cottages with small window openings, arched entryways, walls clad in stucco and flat parapet roofs lined with clay tile coping. Now, used a couple of terms there, parapets is the extension of the wall at the edge of a roof or a terrace or a balcony. And they were originally used to defend buildings from military attacks like on a castle. But today they're primarily used as guardrails and to prevent the spread of fire from building to building. And clay tile coping, that's the covering piece, usually a piece of clay tile on the top of the wall that's exposed to the weather and it diverts rain from simply just running down the wall. It allows the rain to release from the wall. Clay tile vents were created via three horizontal pipes. Every house has these three pipes in a triangular arrangement. The entryway was accessed by three concrete steps, which led up to a small concrete stoop or porch. And it's possible the steps in the front stopes of the porches were enclosed by wrought iron railings, which would have been a common feature of Spanish colonial revival wrought iron. However, there's not enough consistency to the existing porch railings to indicate what a historic railing might have looked like. The entryway consisted of a single door centered within a slightly recessed archway and sheltered by a shallow pent roof clad in clay tile. A pent roof is a roof with a single slanting surface. Now, over the years, there've been many, many small alterations to these homes, so they are no longer identical. And some things that changed is there used to be originally there were two narrow front windows that balanced a larger window on the other side of the door. And many people decided to replace those narrow windows with some other window arrangement. Also, sometimes the clay tile coping was removed from the roof line, so some still have it and some don't. Sometimes the three steps were moved, so some of the steps go directly straight on to the door, some are to the side. So there were changes. I will say this is a little neighborhood that where the neighborhood association has gotten active, quite a bit more active in the last couple of months. There's a lot of talk about their little district and what they can do for it. And one day we had a great amount of fun looking at the windows. Which windows were the same? How are they different? Which ones might have been the originals? So anyway, I enjoy seeing the energy building in the neighborhood of this little historic district. Nevertheless, the similarity in massing, the degree of setback from the street, the maintenance of Spanish revival detail persists, and it provides a striking cohesion to the street. Changes have occurred from the 1920s that would no longer be permitted to the exterior of the houses. Remember, these homes were 560 square feet, which is not quite a tiny home. Tiny homes are supposed to be less than 400 square feet, but this is still pretty tiny. And you look at, well, what have they done to live comfortably in those spaces? Some people feel that Murphy beds were in all of the homes originally. Some people feel originally there was built-in shelving. Today I find it fun that some of the people have built pull-down tables so they can sit down and pull down their table to put their laptop on. Other people have installed loft beds so that the beds are up high and they have more floor space for the kids to play or do other things. It's being creative. And I have some quotes, bear with me as I read some quotes. I think these are special. It says, these are from current Brenner Place residents about living in a tiny home. Tiny home living to me is so much better than an apartment. Besides the fact that we were able to own a piece of land in Long Beach, we do not share walls with anyone else. Our homes may be close to each other and feel like apartments, but they are not touching. And another person said, all in all, I love the tiny space. I grew up with many siblings and we were never really alone. There is something to be said about loving and living this way. This house is a place where no matter where you are, you can always be seen and heard. It's comforting as much as it is annoying at times. And I think you can hear in the quotations that sense that home ownership is something that is intrinsically, deeply American. That we have the sense that we have to own a home to be full citizens. And it's certainly the sentiment of Walt Whitman, the great American poet, who said that you're not holding complete unless you own a home and the ground on which it sits. So that sense of home ownership has been a driving influence for Americans, even though at least at this time a majority of Americans could not enjoy home ownership. So in 1922 to 26, when the homes in Minerva Park were built, Long Beach was booming. At this point there were thriving oil fields, there was rising port activity, there was growing tourist attractions. And it was already identified in the city directories as the playground of the world and the home of industry. The city was expanding and transitioning from horse and buggy to automobile. The 16 homes in the Minerva Park Historic District, again it's just 16 homes, like Brinner Place is 20, Minerva Park is 16. Simultaneously represent the modest single family residences in which many working class citizens lived from the 1910s through the 1960s. But it also showcases the Spanish revival architecture style popular in the 1920s. But here it acknowledges the onset of the era of the automobile. All 16 Spanish revival properties share a family resemblance. They were built by the same person. There's no building permit records available for the 10 properties that entered the tax base in 1922, however. But there is that Spanish revival resemblance for all of them. And the city building permits that were filed in 1925 for the six newer properties list Frank Smith and wife Clara. We'll come back to Clara as the owner and Ray Schmidt as the contractor. Now city directories show that Frank and Clara lived on Daisy Avenue in 1922 and on Gaviota just a street over in 1925. But had moved to their newly completed home at 1049 Minerva Park by 1926. And Ray Schmidt only appears in city directories in 1925 and 1926. One of the most significant design features in this historic district is the recognition that automobile ownership was a routine part of the lives of the homeowners. Today we take driveways and garages for granted. We assume that that's going to be part of what we buy when we buy a house. But in 1922, it was pretty forward thinking. All 16 of these otherwise modest homes include side driveways and single car garages. And evidence suggests that the driveways were originally dual ribbon concrete that is two strips of concrete separated by grass. Now a second significant design feature when I compare these homes built in the same time period as Brenner place homes is even though these homes are 680 square feet to 13, I mean 1130 square feet. So they are bigger, but it's significant to me is that there's the street. There is a little strip between the street and the sidewalk. And then there is a setback of about 10 feet until you get to the house. That is a spatial privacy that this builder chose to include, which is true of some of the older homes to but in the year of the automobile. You know, they still kept that on these lots. And there's a feeling of independence and privacy that you don't have on the Brenner place lots. So a homogeneous yet individualized use of Spanish revival architecture is a third significant component of this historic district. No two homes are the same. They all exhibit Spanish revival style architecture and that lends a harmony to the street, but these elements are applied and combined differently in each home. So there's a really a delightful character to this block. And if you visit it, I think you'll enjoy noting all of the interesting variations on a shared theme. No predominantly flat roofs with parapets taking different shapes and accented with red roof tile, as opposed to again the flat roofs of Brenner place. And the clay tile coping is not only attractive but again provides a measure protection of deflects water away from the house. And here you'll notice. Well, first off, we want to point out the sand finish, which most of the homes that that was typical of the type of finish in this time period. And most of the homes do keep that that finish. But I also wanted to point out in this home in particular that it is possible, even though all of the homes maintain defining features that are typical of Spanish revival. A lot of them have hints that maybe the designer of these homes was influenced by Irving Gill. Irving Gill was active mostly in the Southern California area. He lived until 1936 he died at a relatively young age in his 60s. But he is considered to be one of the pioneers of the modern movement. And he believed in stripping unnecessary ornamentation from a home. He was quoted as saying, we must dare to be simple. This sounds a little bit like modern home building. And if you if you look at as you're walking down Minerva you feel like you're in a home in a block where it's Spanish revival. But there's there's a sense sometimes that there's a bit more width to some of the arches, some of the window openings are a little wider than you might have thought expected. And there's a certain cleanness or sharpness to some of the edges that that just might make you think of Gill. So so this is a Spanish revival architecture with you know with its arches and the red clay tile roof, but it has a simplicity that's really I think quite striking. Know the abundant instances of arches and creating windows, entrances and just niches in these asymmetrical houses. Some homes have grilled attic openings as accents. And these grills vary considerably in design. Some houses create attic vents through the use of clay tile pipes, but in different groupings remember in Brenner place they were always in a triangle. Here you see them side by side but there are other variations. Some houses have a tower. Some houses have a chimney. And I do think that this builder must have decided to play with the various entry ways to the homes. There is a tremendous variety from one home to the next in how you enter the home. The most prominent style is in this one that you see here where you come into an exterior entry way where you you're you're sheltered but you're still outside the house. But then look at this one where yes, the doorway is slightly recessed. You can step in there but you're not sheltered a lot before you go inside the house. Then here. Oh, you you step through the doorway into an interior entry. Here you're outside without any protection before you enter the home. It's flush sheltered on a small projecting pen or shed roof. So the tremendous variety this we included this because of the thought that this might have been one of the original doors with with that geometric window in the original door. Generally these houses of clean sharp edges. There's minimal ornamentation. Most of them have a walkway leading from the front main entrance to the sidewalk. And fortunately, as we mentioned earlier, early Long Beach City directories usually list a residence occupation, usually the male head of house. But not always. So we know that these homeowners were a teacher, electrician, master mechanic, salesman, gardener, metal worker, city inspector, etc. And we know a few of the residents were single often widowed women and it would know if if a woman was widowed. And we know at least one of these women Clara Smith became an actual Rosie the Riveter during World War two. The wife of the builder Clara and Frank separated by 1935 and Clara stayed in their home at 1049 Minerva Park. In 1943 city directorie Claire is reported as being an aircraft worker. By 45 she is identified as a machinist, a machine operator at a welding company by 51 and an assembler at this same company for many years thereafter. Many current homeowners have resigned have resided on this street for 20 years or more. We want to know exactly what combination of factors have contributed to this relative contentment, whether it's accommodation for automobiles the sense of privacy the visual harmony yet individuality of the street. It's really a charming location. And today increasing interest in the small home movement is driven in part by concerns for our climate and a wish to create a smaller environmental footprint, causing some to take a thoughtful look at historic homes such as these. And keep in mind that it is possible to purchase into historic small homes, much more easily than it is to acquire a new small home. Current ordinances in the city of Long Beach restrict small homes to 600 square feet or more. There are exceptions for about 450 square feet, and there's some talk about doing many homes of 200 some square feet, but those are still in discussion. So, if you are looking for a small home, it is probably far easier to look in historic districts for those small homes, then it would be to look for something that is going to be newly built. And you won't have neighbors who are resistant to the construction of small homes in their otherwise large home neighborhoods. For information about Long Beach Heritage, it's walking tours, the historic Bembridge House membership and volunteer opportunities. We encourage you to visit lbheritage.org. For more information about the historic districts in Long Beach, you do have a lot of resources. Long Beach's Development Services has really a pretty robust website about its historic preservation and the districts. They're the original ordinances that form these districts. There are guidelines for what you can do with the properties in that district. I encourage you to visit them. The maps that we used in our presentation are from their materials. From their materials, right. And for more information about Long Beach history, the historical society of Long Beach has a wealth of information and very good programs for digital resources. The library has tons of information, the directories that we have delved into to find out the history. We sit around evenings going through the city directories and reading advertisements of the businesses at the time. But also, you know, tracking people from year to year where they live, how their occupations changed, et cetera. It's really interesting reading. For both of us. Yes. They also have like postcards, photographs, newspapers. It's great materials. Yeah. And the tour, there's also a free app that you can access called the Tour LBC app. It is slowly expanding the number of tours it has of different historic districts. There's one of Bluff Park right now, I believe Belmont Heights is coming online very shortly. As well as downtown East Village, you are not historic districts, but certainly historic areas available for iPhone or Android tour LBC. Right. And in addition, you know, we, we are at Long Beach Heritage are working alongside many, many groups appreciating Long Beach history. You know, we must not be sure to mention the Ranchos Rancho Los Alamitos Rancho Los Cerritos, wonderful steps back into time. They mark so well. They're the Japanese Cultural Center. The African American Heritage Association, which has established the African American Resource Center at Burnett Library that Burnett is currently closed due to COVID, but I'm looking forward to getting over there after we open up again. A little bit different, but the Long Beach Firefighter Museum is, is delightful. I highly recommend that you stop and see that they're limited. Well, they may be closed right now. Yeah. Even in regular times, their hours are limited, but that's quite a quite a nice little visit. I do want to thank a few people. Louise Ivers has been very generous in time with her time and walking through some of these historic districts with me and talking with me about what she sees when I'm when I'm looking at she's written two books about Long Beach history. She's working on a third. So I want to thank her for helping me out. I also want to thank the residents of Brenner Place. Some of them have been very willing to talk with me about what it's like to live in, in a, in a small home. I do value their perspectives tremendously. Many of the historic districts have active leadership and they are working together to identify significant history in their areas to preserve that history and to support each other in getting that done. It is a process and it doesn't stop. We continue to learn. We continue to have to work to get the message out and save it. So thank you. Yes, thank you. And with that, we're ready for questions. Okay. Wow. Well, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now we're going to turn to the Q&A portion of our program. So as I sent a little message out earlier, if anyone wants to submit questions in the chat that they'd like to have answered, please do so now. Click on the chat button below type your question in the chat bar if you haven't done so already. And we'll be answering those questions and first come first served order. And our first question that we have here from Barbara, she wants to know how much do the Brenner houses rent for now or sell for if you happen to know. As far as I don't know about renting. I did. Maybe a year ago, I had looked on Zillow with a question about that. And it was in the 300 thousands. And then just this week, I looked, and it was more in the 400 thousands. There's been a shift in real estate here. I know that a few of the properties are being rented out, but I do not know what the rates are. Okay, great. And Jeffrey did add a little note here, the estimations on Zillow are 400,000 and not. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now we have another question from Kim. When these homes were built, what was the characteristic of the neighborhood around them? If you know. Let's see. You know, I honestly, I'm not positive. They're very close to Craftsman Village, which is a historic district, which is just to the east of Brenner. And had already been established. And the homes there are a little bit older. The time period for those homes, the period of significance, meaning when most of the homes were built was from 1903 up to about 1922. I'm not positive about that end date. And the character of those homes at the time was most of the homes didn't really have driveways. There were garages, maybe they were for horse and buggy, you know, at that point. And the people living in those homes, I think that there was a pretty stable presence. I think they were there for quite a while. We are not too far. Brenner is not very far at all from where Mola is the Museum of Latin American Art. And at that time, the Balboa film industry was active. Still active. In Long Beach. Still active. At the time that the houses were going up, the studio was still operating. So that they weren't far at all from that. So I honestly, I'm not sure how having a silent film industry shooting within a mile of where you're living would affect the neighborhood. Anyway, those are thoughts. It certainly adds another layer of color and character and dimension to how you can imagine things might have been going around there. Yeah. Okay. We need to keep in mind that when we talk about, you know, these homes being built and purchased, that this was a time before things like mortgages were regulated. So there were no standard practices for how people got mortgages or what the terms for mortgages would be until the Federal Housing Authority was established in 1934. And then the Federal Housing Management Association, Fannie Mae, in 1938, which really standardized the periods of mortgages, the mortgage practices, etc. So and then the prices were such that, again, for about a year salary, you could purchase a home on Brenner Place. So depending on the mortgage that you had within a very few years, you could have paid off your mortgage. Wow. Okay. Okay. So there's no house in California that you can buy today or which you can probably pay your annual salary. Pretty astonishing. So we did have another question. Sam and Linda, what interested you in digging into the history of these efficiency homes and also what do the interiors look like? Are there any original blueprints that still exist? If you go on Zillow, you can actually find some of the interior photos. I did not ask to go into any of the homes as far as what prompted us to look at these homes. You know, when we moved here, we didn't know anything and we focused on the downtown. And as I began to feel more comfortable with what was available downtown, with the historic district, the buildings were like, and East Village, I began to want to expand to know a little bit more about Long Beach. So I decided that I would look at the historic districts that are already existing all around. Remember, these districts were formed in the 90s and the city was identifying these districts as something to preserve. So I thought, okay, my next step is to explore those districts. Then Brenner is, we live downtown. Brenner is not terribly far. I can walk to Brenner from where I live. And honestly, I decided I was going to tackle the smallest places first. And I walked over and to me, Brenner is charming. And I look at it and I think, oh, a retired couple might love to live here. There's little maintenance involved. It's small. You don't need a car because you are close to downtown. You're on bus routes. You know, you're close to the metro. It's in many ways ideal. And at the point that I started looking at that district, they really didn't have a neighborhood association going. A few people were a little interested and I was introduced to some of them. And I have just been very inspired by the energy that these people got excited. They've started talking to their neighbors more. They are having regular meetings. They're working on kind of improving the area. I'm thrilled. I know people in Craftsman Village Historic District, which is adjacent. But I didn't know anything about Minerva Park. It's another small district that doesn't currently have leadership. And I thought, let's find out more about Minerva. Let's let people know about Minerva Park as well. And the two I think are useful for comparison because you have these identical homes on Brenner Place. And then that are all 560 square feet. And then on Minerva, you have houses that vary in size. So it also demonstrates that using Spanish colonial revival style, you can do a house that you can do a street that's uniform. Or you can do a street where there's big and small houses side by side. And they work together that they all contribute to the harmony of that street. So it is in fact possible for small homes to sit side by side with larger homes in a successful neighborhood. And actually, these two districts, it's like, how do these historic districts relate to today? And today, there's so much talk about small homes and tiny homes. And I thought that's how these districts relate to today. They're about tiny homes and small homes. And they demonstrate that this is really not a new topic that people have been opting for small homes for a very long time. Okay, we do have a comment just from... Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Okay, great. So we do have a comment from Teresa that 750 Alamedo's Avenue. I think that was when you mentioned they have the carport and the driveway. Is that correct? Yeah, she said it's currently showing on Zillow for a sale price of $430,000. Yeah. So hey, that's not bad. What do you think about what condos cost in this area too? Up to 3,000. Yeah. Yeah. I think only a year ago it was in the 300,000s. Yeah. I think there's been the jump. Yeah. Oh my goodness, that's amazing. So Jeff, Duffrey has the block of 9th Street, west of Orange, been considered to be a historical district. Uniform houses approximately 600 square feet between Craftsman Village Park and the Buddhist Temple on Orange. Yes. Yes. There is some talk of adding that to the Craftsman Village Historic District. I don't know where things stand with that. The city is looking at this. But Craftsman Village boundaries are, they're looking at expanding them slightly. And it's very similar to that little district. They're calling it Little 9th Street. It's very similar to Brenner. Right. For example, in Craftsman Village, the west side of Walnut is part of Craftsman Village. But across the street, the east side of Walnut is not. And so one side of the street is in the historic district. One side of the street is not. And the city is looking at, maybe we need to expand these boundaries a bit. And stop dividing them in the middle of the street that make both sides be in or out. Yeah. Okay. Nita is wondering, how do you find out the age, month, and year of your house? Also, who the architect was? Well, yeah. If you go into the tax records, you can find out the year that a home appeared in the tax records. And I confess, Louise has always, Louise Ivers has always done that for me. So I'm not sure I've never done it myself. And it is possible the house might have been built ahead of that. But likely that is when the house came into existence when it starts paying taxes. As far as the architect goes, that's a little more challenging. Yeah. You may or may not find that in any records available. You can find the, there are building permits. Long Beach City has a historical building permit records. And if you're lucky, there will be a building permit record. And if you're more lucky, it will list the builder and the architect. Right. Okay. Okay. So we have a question from William, who wants to know how much damage did these two districts suffer in the 1933 earthquake? Do you happen to know anything about that? Yeah, I don't. You know, I really don't. They're there in the building permit records. Sometimes you can find, if you look at, you can find that there were requests to do repair work on a property. And honestly, I haven't looked. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it would be something. If there's information, it would likely be available either in photographs of the street that might or might not exist. And I don't know. I don't know that the Long Beach Public Library would have photographs of Brenner or Minerva. But also in building records, if there was some kind of major work that was done that required a building permit. I know some in Craftsman Village, for instance, and probably this is true all over the homes tend to sit on the foundation. They aren't really attached. And they are now encouraging people to strap the homes to the foundation. So if there's an earthquake, they won't shift and fall off. But there was so much damage during the earthquake that records of two individual homes and especially small homes like this would probably be few and far between, I would think. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's not a good answer. Not a good answer. Sorry. Okay. Sorry about that. Can you hear me okay? Okay, great. Thank you for joining us. It's 4 p.m. now, so I just wanted to mention if anybody needs to leave right away, we want to thank you again for joining us. But if you still have questions for Sam and Linda and you can't stay any longer, go ahead and leave a message in the chat with your name and email contact information and they'll be able to follow up with you at a later time after the meeting is over. Otherwise, we're going to hang around for another 15 minutes or so until 4.15 and then we'll end the program. Do you happen to have any historical information on the Long Beach Pike, Arthur Loof home located at Fifth and Cedar, as well as the Long Beach Pike Carousel? Do you know anything about those two? The Loof Carousel is in a state of district care. It had been moved to city property and allowed to deteriorate. I don't know anything about the home at Fifth and Cedar, though. Honestly, there are probably records. Long Beach Heritage probably has a file on that home, but I have not looked at it personally. That's something that if someone wanted to leave their contact information, I could probably look it up, but I don't know it right off the top of my head. Okay. We do have a vast Long Beach History Index here at the library in our digital archive, as well as historic photos, as Linda mentioned earlier, and a lot of other records. We could possibly find out more information about that for the person who's interested. I think that was May. Long Beach Historical Society too may have a lot of information. Light of line on Long Beach Boulevard has some artifacts in the park. Excellent. Also, did you happen to know how old is the Loof home on Fifth Avenue or when the house was built? I think that was not yet. I didn't know. Okay. We have another question from William. Can you put the historic district map back up on the screen? He wanted to take a screenshot of that. And you can find this at the Long Beach Development Services website. You'll find that map readily available. And I'll point out that this is the new map that at the very top of the map, you see a little red one way at the top there. That is the newest historic district. They've adjusted their map to include the newest historic district that came online about maybe two years ago now. Yeah. The grant neighborhood. Yeah, the city website. You can just print it right off. Oh, my goodness. Also, another question from William. How far back do building records go in Long Beach? Do you happen to know about that? Let's see. The city was incorporated in 1897. So they start there. I don't know. Yeah. They go back pretty far. Although, you know, sometimes it's erratic. Well, like in the instance of both, Brenner. Well, Brenner, only nine of the properties have building permit records. Right. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. One or 22 on the street. Yeah. We also had a question from Sydney. Are these houses on raised foundations? I'm going to know. Brenner place and or or Minerva park or both. Or they didn't specify. So I imagine either. Yeah. That's a good question. Yeah. If you want to submit your emails, Linda or Sam ever happened to come across any information? We can always try to get that to you or. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I didn't pay attention when we were at Minerva park or Brenner place. I didn't pay attention to that. I'm sorry. No problem. Okay. On the guidelines, if you go on the city's website, I want to reiterate, there's really quite a lot of information on the city's website. Yeah. The housing ordinance is that the historic district ordinances are there on the city's website. So the, the defining features of the homes and, and the specifications to create this historic district are made available by the city on its website. And the second one, the guidelines for the district has quite a bit of information there. So you might find the answer to those questions. There. Yeah. Cause, cause those guidelines indicate what kinds of changes you can make to the interior or exterior of your home. That would be permissible. Yeah. Okay. We did have a comment from Teresa that regarded in 1933 earthquake and damage, most likely no damage. I'm not sure Teresa if you live in that neighborhood. She also commented later that the foundations are raised in both locations. Thank you. Teresa. Yeah. Thank you. And Sidney did mention that his house was built in 1910 and the city has is the building permit. So. Wow. Excellent. Okay. Let's see. And then Chris source did include a link to the historic district map in the chat there for everybody. If you're interested in clicking on that link before or the program ends, you can get access to that in your. You can get access to that there. And then Ava has a question. If a person is interested in a particular property condo house in Long Beach, how can they find who owns that property? Now. Who owns it? I think sometimes like Zillow and some of those websites sometimes list the prior owners in the current. I don't know if they list them by name. I don't know. I don't know if they list them by name. I've seen it in some places, but I don't remember which sites it was. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. Sorry. No problem. Okay. And then a quick question. Did a sidewalks in the portions of the streets still belong to the owners or did those ever revert to the city? How did that all turn out? Yes, they still belong to the owners. Amazing. Yeah. So the private road is in need of some repair, but it's up to the owners to do that repair. Or they're wondering, they are looking into that. Yeah. The issue of it being a private road. Has come up in the ordinances for three of the historic districts. Original according to the ordinances originally. And then the residents at Branner, Minerva, and a third one, Wilton were private roads at the very beginning. And it looks to me like. Minerva and Wilton are no longer private roads. And I'm not sure. I don't know how that conversion took place. And the residents at Branner are actually considering their private road. They're asking, do we want to stay at private road? Would we hope the city would annex it so that it would change the kinds of services? It's a good question. Yeah. They might want to keep it a private road or maybe they don't. Yeah. You know, we have a few other questions. Were there, you know, are there any particular challenges to living in a small historic district, you know, especially for anybody you might be considering trying to buy into a small historic district? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Are you aware of for people who are. Considering this. Into a small home or well into a district. A historic to a historic district. Or a small historic district. Yeah. In particular, like Brenner, Minerva. I don't know. I don't know that the size of the district would make a big difference. The, you know, the advantages to living in a historic district could be the camaraderie, the support, the rallying, the pride, the stability of the neighborhood. There are restrictions on the kinds of changes that you can make to the exterior of your home, which means that you need to keep your home up, which means that the property value of your home relative to your neighbors remains more stable. And your neighborhood is less likely to be, to suffer some decline from disrepair or disuse. The flip side of that, of course, is the challenge could be that say you want to expand. Your house and make an addition. There will be restrictions on how you can get that accomplished. Some of the districts are the lots are too small to the city will say you can't. You can't go up. Like if, if it's all single, single floor homes and you want to build a second floor. No, you're not going to be allowed to do that. For example, you would not be permitted to build a second story on a Brenner place home. Right. Because it would violate the characteristics of the neighborhood. On the other hand, if you want to expand your home and your lot is big enough. Yes, you can make an addition to the rear of the home or the side of the home. It needs to be somewhat in keeping with the massing that's already present on the street. So you maintain the character. Yeah. And ideally not visible from the street. Right. So that's, that, you know, is both a positive and a negative. That is the city is there trying to protect the integrity of the neighborhood. So as a homeowner, you have that protection. Right. Your neighbor can't just do any crazy thing that they might be inclined to. If you think that you would like your house to be bright yellow and it doesn't. Well, they might say you need to pick a different choice. Right. So, so there are, there are some positives and there are some negatives. I think that if you want to live in a historic district, you have to in some way appreciate the value of, of the cohesion in the street as a marker of that time period. Yeah. You can certainly make any changes you want inside the home. You can modernize it completely. But expansion to the exterior will require review. And on the other hand, there are a limited number of homes in historic districts. So their value is stable and increasing as homes age and become even more valuable. And there's a growing appreciation for the homes of historic districts. So they're, you know, they're not like, they're not, they're not building them this way anymore. And so if you want something that's distinctive, if you want something that has historic importance, homes in historic districts, offer that to you in a way that homes in new neighborhoods won't. Okay. And we have just one last quick question. What, it's a personal question to both of you. Just out of curiosity, what possessed you to move to Long Beach? If you don't mind commenting. Well, we had been in Texas for 30 years. And looking for a change in our son and daughter-in-law at the time we're living in Los Angeles. So this allowed us to get a little bit closer, our older son, we have a younger son who is still in Texas. So this allowed us to make that change and also move a little bit closer to our son and daughter-in-law who have now since moved to Long Beach. And in fact, now live in a historic district in Craftsman Village. Oh, wonderful. And we have a bunch of Craftsman Village folks joining us today. I think so. We're also very interested in living in a community where we thought we could walk to a lot of places where we are situated. Now we are not in a historic district. In fact, we live in a condo. We're in walking distance to a grocery store, to the bank, to our dentists, coffee shops, restaurants. We feel a little bit like we're in what you think of a small town, but we're in an urban setting. And that was something that was appealing to us. Yeah. Yeah. Diversity here. More diversity. That's true. Another plus for us. Yeah. Long Beach is a very walkable city in a lot of ways and lots of character and interesting neighborhoods. And that's what we are trying to emphasize and profile in these architecture and historic preservation talks. And we just want to mention to everyone that if you have any more questions or interest in Long Beach history or historic districts, architectural styles, and other topics, we have many books and resources in our Miller Room Special Collections, in the library's general collections, as well as on our website in digital form. Our digital archive has historic photos, city directories, historic newspapers, clipping files, so much more as we've mentioned already. So please do check out our online catalog on the website. Go to our Special Collections webpage, our Genealogy and Long Beach History webpage. Or you can contact our Miller Room staff for more information. That's part of what we do here is we do research about Long Beach history for our patrons and community. So feel free to give us a shout. So now we're at 4.15 now and we need to wrap up our program. But I'd like to thank again Sam and Linda Draga of Long Beach Heritage for your time and your very generous support of our educational enrichment of our Long Beach Public Library community. And I'd also like to thank all of our guests who have joined us today for this architecture and historic preservation series program, as well as our library administration and staff, friends of the library or Long Beach Public Library Foundation and many other contacts for helping to promote this event today. And our sincerest thanks and appreciation to all of you. Have a wonderful evening, everyone. Stay safe and healthy. And we look forward to seeing you again soon for more upcoming programs at the Miller Room and the Long Beach Public Library. Thanks again, everyone, and good night. Thank you. Thank you.