‘Wrong Way’ Signs of Neighborhood’s Rights
The signs at the street corners on the west side of Fairfax Avenue between Wilshire and Olympic, declaring “Do Not Enter” and “Wrong Way,” are ugly and loud--and just what the community of Carthay Circle ordered.
To residents there the signs are victory banners in a battle they waged for two years to seal off their historic mid-Westside community from through traffic.
They’ll be celebrating their victory Sunday at 2 p.m. with a symbolic planting at the base of the signs, to be followed with a block party on De Valle Drive, west of Fairfax.
My family will be celebrating with them, for Lindsey Rosin, a playmate of my son, Josef, lives in that neighborhood. It was through Lindsey’s father, Charles, that I first heard of the campaign to close the Carthay Circle neighborhood to at least some of the workday traffic from Fairfax and Wilshire boulevards.
Previously I had known the area simply as a well-scaled subdivision of mostly subdued stucco and red-tiled Spanish Colonial Revival houses, a style that swept across the city in the 1920s and in a variety of forms is still quite popular.
Carthay Circle has one of the best collections of the style, and viewing it on occasion has become a pleasant diversion when I’m in the neighborhood, catching an exhibit at the nearby County Museum of Art, or doing research at the California Historical Society at 6300 Wilshire Blvd. (The society has a fascinating photo exhibit open free to the public and worth a peek. For more information: (213) 651-5655.)
Lending Carthay Circle further distinction is the fact that it was the first subdivision in Los Angeles to bury its utility lines, no small gesture in the early 1920s--nor now.
In addition, the tree-lined streets were laid out at angles and with mid-block pedestrian paths focusing on a neighborhood commercial center. Dominating that center was a first-run movie house, the Carthay Circle Theater. (“Gone With the Wind” had its Hollywood premiere there.)
The result was a pleasant, family-oriented community of about 200 homes, desirable for its comfortable houses, tree-shaded streets, congenial elementary school and convenient location midway between the ocean and downtown and just a few minutes from Beverly Hills and the mid-Wilshire District.
But it was this location that also in time began to undermine what residents saw as the integrity of the community. The center and the landmark theater were demolished in 1968 for an office complex. Other offices went up along an increasingly congested Wilshire Boulevard to the north, dumping traffic onto local streets.
Nevertheless, Carthay Circle continued to attract young couples, such as the Rosins. And with the couples came children, and concern over the traffic.
“The streets no longer were our own,” recalls Barbara Caplan, a mother of three children, ages 4 to 10. “You wouldn’t dare let them ride a bicycle, even along the sidewalk. Our street just was a constant stream of transient traffic, which at rush hour backed up at least half a block.”
So when residents learned that a 16-story office building, scheduled to rise at the southwest corner of Fairfax and Wilshire, would dump even more traffic on the local streets, it was a call to arms.
“An environmental report indicated that the traffic on our streets might triple,” comments Rosin, who heads the Carthay Circle Homeowners Assn.
After some debate, the community decided to appeal to the city for barriers to prevent traffic from Fairfax Avenue from entering three local streets, Del Valle, Warner and Barrows drives.
Petitions by the community to the city’s Department of Transportation were at first ignored, says Rosin.
Eventually the department, prodded by local Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, agreed to the barriers. But it added that the city would not pay for them, which because of the need to resolve drainage problems would cost an estimated $60,000.
While the community tried to get the office building developer to pick up some of the costs as a gesture of good will, George Snelling, a city engineer, came forward on his own initiative to show how the drainage problem could be handled simply and inexpensively.
Snelling’s solution prompted the developer to do the street work as part of a package of required site improvements, with the result that a few weeks ago the community had its barriers, replete with city-donated signs.
The effect was immediate. The streets are quieter, safer and friendlier, say residents. “You can now hear the birds instead of the traffic,” adds Caplan.
Of course there has been a price. Drivers who used the streets as through routes must now stick to the main boulevards, aggravating congestion there. Also inconvenienced have been Carthay Circle residents, who cannot make left turns onto Fairfax, or enter their community with ease from the east.
“It is a little enough price for us to pay for having created what amounts to a small town, right in the middle of Los Angeles,” Rosin comments.
If you want to visit Carthay Circle, I suggest you park on the adjoining boulevards and walk. You’ll enjoy it more, and the residents will appreciate it.
