According to legend, this 1913 Swiss chalet-style bungalow was commissioned by a woman—but who was she?

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Neighbors think Wendy Harn paid the royal sum of $1 for this immense two-story 1913 bungalow in the Bluff Park Historic District, but they’re wrong.
“Wendy got the house for free,” all 3,287 square feet of it, says [...]

At age 65 in 1932, she commissioned one of the city’s most ornately-designed decorated homes

PHOTO by ZACK PIANKO
A childless widow with investments in the oil and movie industries, Minnie Butler must have been the youngest 65-year-old ever. How else to explain the way she spent the year 1932? At an age when many people were [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]