Artist the Pizz’s 1931 Spanish-style house holds a considerable array of art and collectibles

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
“I don’t know. What do you call this, Spanish Revival?” lowbrow artist the Pizz asks as we’re squinting at the signature on a print in the two-story, 1931 house he shares with his wife Yukie in East Long Beach. [...]

Morning in Bixby Knolls, at the cottage of the Duke and Duchess

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
A friend of mine judges the quality of a neighborhood and its citizenry by their ability to cross the street properly—a test that Bixby Knolls, home to our only Duke and Duchess (of Bixby Knolls), the honorable Philip and Gillian [...]

For a brief time in the ’20s, Miner R. Smith bungalows scaled the Heights—Belmont Heights, that is

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
You don’t need a university education to build a house, and so Long Beach is full of tidy, quirky bungalows from now-faceless men with excellent design sense—and nary an architectural degree.
C. Waale was one, a [...]

There are studios, and then there’s the SeaPort Marina

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
You’re 29 years old, living in a rented home near College Estates Park with roommates Biggie, One Puff and Rahman, when the landlord tells you he needs his home back. You say OK and decide to move in with your girlfriend of three [...]

The house that perseverance, Rastra and a factory in Corona built

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
The house Graham Robertson and Karena Massengill share with their two African Grey Parrots is two stories tall and it sits on the edge of the bluff in San Pedro, grounded in a still-revolutionary building material called Rastra, a blend of Styrofoam [...]

Life lived circa ‘74

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
As the nation prepares for the return of Don Draper, Don Draper’s suits, Don Draper’s office chair and, of course, one Miss Joan Holloway on the upcoming season premiere of Mad Men, it would seem our fascination with AMC’s depiction of mid-century living—clean lines, clean faces and dirty, dirty [...]

The skies aren’t always sunnier in Long Beach’s Cliff May houses, but it sure seems that way

PHOTO by ROCHELLE KRAMER
It’s hard to say whether life really is better in one of the Ranchos, Long Beach’s area of 950 ranch houses designed by Cliff May, who invented the style. But there are days when it sure [...]

Jonah Jones Sr. must have admired his son, Jonah Jones Jr.; He built him a Spanish villa at the beach

PHOTO COURTESY COLDWELL BANKER
Vintage gated communities are not emblematic of Long Beach, but we do have them.
There’s one at 37th Place near Redondo Avenue and Ocean Boulevard, on a little street so nice, they gated it [...]

Josh and Erika Lowenthal’s 1905 Craftsman-Chalet house is classic, quiet Carroll Park

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Lined with mature trees and vintage houses, Carroll Park has to be our most silent historic district.
On a recent evening, the rustling of the breeze through the pine trees was punctuated only by the briefest wail of a distant police siren. [...]

E. Thor Carlson’s 1953 house in Ridgewood Heights seems made for entertaining

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
“Art. We’re all about art,” former Cultural Heritage Commissioner E. Thor Carlson says, after a tour of the house he and friend Michael Hudson own in the 1950s Ridgewood Heights subdivision of Bixby Knolls.
He’s a man of his word: The cavernous [...]