Where else is there to go when you have your own in-home bar?

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Apartments like the airy, two-story, three bedroom unit just off Retro Row rented by Susan Janz and Jennifer Celio can at once leave you feeling overwhelmed and pissed. Overwhelmed, because you realize this is but one of our city’s legion [...]

A meticulously-restored Bixby Knolls mid-century modern gets found in the details

PHOTO by EILEEN PUGH
It was as if they were restoring a killer 1954 Cadillac Coupe deVille. Virtually every metal component was pulled apart and hand-dipped in liquid alloy, the carpet was stripped and replaced to look exactly the same and anything worn was sanded clean [...]

Andrea Bell’s 1938 frame house is a sun-fueled, eco-friendly zone

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
It’s hard to believe, but up until about 10 years ago, Andrea Bell’s little yellow sun-powered house overlooked the Pacific Electric train tracks slicing Long Beach northwest to southeast. Now, Bell’s quiet dead-end street borders the Long Beach Greenbelt, which is what became [...]

The 1920s cottages on Barker Way were built from kits

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
The little houses on Barker Way in Belmont Heights—and on the north side of Vermont Street between Lucille and Tremont avenues—aren’t a historic district yet.
But residents who own and love them have begun that process, meeting last year with the city’s Historic Preservation [...]

The Petersons’ penthouse loft was once ground zero for white-collar boxers

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Nine years ago, developer Dan Peterson was in the hydraulics business—setting cities up with heavy equipment to repair things like trash trucks—when he found himself irresistibly drawn to the Insurance Exchange building at Broadway and the Promenade.
He’d never, ever redeveloped a building [...]

Part Estates history, through the ample windows of an early modern house

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
“This was the dog on the block when we got it—avocado green and all overgrown,” says homeowner Sandra Allen, as we tour the sprawling circa-1949 ranch house she and husband Tim bought eight years ago. It’s hard to believe; their 2,000-square-foot [...]

How to create space in your apartment by filling it with more stuff

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
I used to watch TV upside down. Or it least it would feel that way before bed, when I would plop onto my tattered twin mattress—head where the feet should be, feet where my head preferred to be—to catch a [...]

A curvilinear downtown body shop has a high-class history

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Hiten Adhvaryu didn’t realize he was becoming part of history when he leased the old Horn’s body shop location from the Horns a year ago—but he knew he liked 1427 Long Beach Blvd.’s avant garde looks (curvy walls, shark fin sign, round showroom) and [...]

The Boumas’ California Heights Spanish Colonial is a low-mileage museum of style

PHOTO by JENNIFER STOCKDALE
Being named the West’s best neighborhood by Sunset magazine in 2002 makes California Heights probably the city’s most famous historic residential district. But it makes owning a Spanish-style in Cal Heights—possibly the signature architectural style here—spendy, and a lot of work. [...]

A Spanish Bungalow gets the high-end hotel makeover

When friends see the suite-like bedroom David Galindo designed for Chris Sesoko and Javier Rodriguez, they figure the Belmont Heights couple razed an exterior wall and pushed out into the back yard of their 1920s Spanish bungalow. In fact, they merely cleaned their room.
It was about time, says [...]