Who Decides Which Hancock Park House Becomes a Landmark

Walk past 601 Lorraine Boulevard on an ordinary Tuesday and you'll see a two-story French Normandy with nothing that shouts for attention. Nothing on the sidewalk tells you that architect Paul Williams drew this one in 1932 for a family named Collins, or that it sat empty for seven years before Mr. and Mrs. Lee Chase bought it in 1967, or that the banister in the entry hall is original, believed to have been carved on site.

A few blocks over on South Windsor Boulevard, a house with a whimsical turret has its own quiet history. The turret came later, added to complete a transformation that started with a 1941 garage and a 1948 wing. In 1986, Veronica Porsche Ali, the third wife of Muhammad Ali, moved in with her two daughters after leaving Fremont Place. One of them, Laila Ali, would become an undefeated professional boxing champion.

Nobody at Los Angeles City Hall decided these two houses were worth remembering this way. A small group of unpaid neighbors did, working out of a resident's living room on South Windsor Boulevard. They're the Windsor Square-Hancock Park Historical Society, and this year they turn 50.

Older Than the Rules That Govern the Neighborhood

The Society formed in 1976 as a nonprofit built to collect and preserve the history of what it calls the Greater Rancho La Brea area, the stretch of Los Angeles that includes Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and Fremont Place. That's more than three decades before the city ever stepped in with its own preservation tool. Hancock Park's Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, the ordinance that reviews exterior changes to houses in the district, wasn't adopted by City Council until 2008.

The two systems do different work. The HPOZ has legal teeth. It can hold up a permit for a new garage door or a repainted trim color. The Historical Society has none of that authority. What it has instead is a Historic Landmark Award, a title with no regulatory power at all, given out to houses and buildings the group decides deserve a place in the neighborhood's memory.

What Actually Earns the Plaque

The awards aren't reserved for architectural celebrities. Recent honorees include 601 Lorraine Boulevard, Historic Landmark Award #130, and 616 South Windsor Boulevard, #131. A third award that same round went to the Clinton Manor Courtyard Apartments in Larchmont Village, a multi-family American Colonial Revival building, proof that a landmark in this neighborhood doesn't have to be a single-family mansion behind a hedge.

Each award comes with actual research. Brian Curran, the Society's vice president for landmark awards, prepared the history behind 601 Lorraine, tracing five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a three-room basement, and a full attic back to the Collins family commission. For 616 South Windsor, Curran traced the additions decade by decade, ending with the Ali family's arrival and the eventual departure of Veronica Porsche Ali into acting and later psychology.

A plaque doesn't stop a remodel. It just makes sure the block remembers what was there first.

The People Doing the Work

The Society runs on volunteers with day jobs and specific obsessions. Richard Battaglia, its president, has described himself as a fanatic about historic houses and has organized tours ranging from Craftsman-era St. Andrews Place to the Georgian and Tudor Revival homes of Rossmore Avenue. Jane Gilman, the vice president of historic research, is a former owner of the Larchmont Chronicle who later wrote her own book on the neighborhood's history, sold at Chevalier's Books on Larchmont Boulevard. Joseph Guidera, vice president of events, has restored a 1927 Mediterranean Revival home of his own. Bret Parsons, a realtor and architectural author, has co-led tours pairing his market knowledge with a historian's eye for detail.

None of this is paid work. It's neighbors who happen to know where the bodies, architecturally speaking, are buried.

This Year's Calendar, Fifty Years In

A group that's been at this since 1976 doesn't slow down for its anniversary. This year's programming so far has included:

• March 20: A tour of Judson Studios, the oldest family-owned and operated stained glass company in the country by the Society's own description, and a return visit for the group after roughly fifteen years away.
• May 2: "Gardens in Bloom: A Floral Legacy," a docent-guided walk through four private gardens split between Windsor Square and Hancock Park, including one on June Street that backs up against the Wilshire Country Club golf course. Homeowner Lauren Scher built hers around a Mediterranean palette with a pop of lavender. Lindsay Sturman went the opposite direction, leaning into wildflowers and California natives to match her Georgian Revival house. Tickets ran $55 for members and $100 for nonmembers, with check-in at 355 South Windsor Boulevard.

Both events point to the same pattern. The Society doesn't just protect old houses from demolition. It gets neighbors inside gates and gardens they'd otherwise only glimpse from the street.

What Fall Usually Brings

The Society's signature event is its annual home tour, and it rotates streets rather than repeating the same script. Last fall's edition, held November 2, was called "The Merry Homes of Windsor Boulevard" and featured three houses built a century earlier, including the historic Janss-Chandler house. Volunteers Diane Sherwood, Suzanne Branchflower, Diana Braker, and Marlene Zweig staffed the check-in table at the Windsor Boulevard home of June Bilgore, handing out programs before docents walked small groups through each property.

In other years the tour has focused on Lucerne Boulevard's "Legacies of Lucerne," a set of six historic homes, or gone further west to a Craftsman-era block party on St. Andrews Place complete with a barbershop quartet and antique cars. One year it went inside the neighborhood's cluster of Consulate General residences, a rare peek behind gates that stay closed the other 364 days of the year.

If the pattern holds, this fall will send the tour down a different street entirely, which is part of the point. A resident who's lived here for a decade still hasn't seen the inside of every house the Society has opened up.

The Next Time You Walk Past

Somewhere on a street you walk regularly, there's a house the Society hasn't gotten to yet. Maybe it has a story like the Collins house on Lorraine, or an addition history as layered as the one on South Windsor. The people deciding which houses get that kind of attention aren't planners or city staff. They're neighbors with a research habit and a mailing list, working out of a house at 355 South Windsor Boulevard that doubles as command central every time the group opens its doors to the rest of us.

Fifty years in, they're still finding houses worth naming.

If you're curious about the history behind your own Hancock Park or Windsor Square property, or you're thinking ahead to a future move in the neighborhood, Sonya Chun has spent decades paying attention to blocks exactly like these. Let's Connect.