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 [...]

The belief system that powers condo sales in downtown Long Beach

They’re calling it Pine@Sixth, with that little character for the “at” sign, which raises the question: Which Pine at Sixth? There are four corners: the old Press-Telegram building—soon to be lofts; Rite-Aid (formerly Thrifty); and the units built to replace the old Long Beach Plaza.
Which [...]

Reviving a Belmont Shore Spanish Revival

PHOTO by ZACK PIANKO
When Mark Estrada was a kid in ’60s-era Rowland Heights, developers had just begun to harvest a bumper crop of tract homes from L.A. and Orange County farmland. He went to work for a lumber company in Corona, a city where “Spanish Revival” means a suburban tract [...]

The Walker Building: Home is where the floating stairway is

When the Southern Californian thinks of a home, he/she thinks of a house: back yards, roofs, weird neighbor across the street who insists on painting his house that color.
Apartments? No. Apartments are not homes, thinks the Southern Californian. Apartments are those things that faded celebrities die [...]