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A Design History of L.A.'S Dingbat Apartment Buildings (2021)
- bryancoxwell 3y agoRelated 99% Invisible episode: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/99-vernacular-volume-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/99-vernacular-volume-...
- catlover76 3y ago> known locally as dingbats. I have never heard anyone call them that lol
- eagleinparadise 3y agoPeople who know LA architecture & RE history do call them that ;)
- bastardoperator 3y agoBorn and raised in Los Angeles, lived there for 40+ years, had family in Korea Town and lived in Hollywood off of Cahuenga. I'm very familiar with these structures, I've never heard them referred to as dingbats, ever.
- youcantcook 3y agoSame. Never heard this term before, but the article showed the pink flamingo and I instantly understood what they were talking about.
- bastardoperator 3y agoThe second I saw it, I knew it too, and then I immediately started getting anxiety about parking.
- Root_Denied 3y ago3rd generation LA native here - my family has never called them anything except dingbats as far back as I can remember. Plenty of other people I've talked to who are from LA used that term as well (or were familiar with it), so I don't think it's a regional LA thing either.
- hifromLA 3y agoI have, but I’ve also met some LA natives that have never heard the term. It is a real thing, but it’s not universal for everybody.
- jseliger 3y agoL.A. should really remove all parking requirements: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program/ https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-.... Dingbats were mostly constructed before the '70s constrictions on housing development, including severe parking minimums.
- bcrosby95 3y agoLA is a big place, and includes suburbs. If they're gonna do that, they'll have to add more transit to these areas. But for places with existing transit, yeah I agree.
- ravetcofx 3y agoChicken and egg problem, less demand for transit and improving it if there's more people driving (and parking)
- jedberg 3y agoI grew up in LA and have visited many times since. The biggest change is from Uber/Lyft. You no longer need a DD or nearly as much parking, now that you can just pay someone to take you around. It's not as good as transit, but it's a good stopgap to solve the problem until there is a bunch of housing without parking and the need for transit increases.
- mdorazio 3y agoFYI, Uber/Lyft are massively more expensive than owning your own vehicle or using public transit (3x-4x the cost) if you need to go places regularly. They are currently not a viable solution for lower income residents of most cities.
- jedberg 3y agoOf course not, you're paying for the driver's time. That's why I said it's a viable stopgap for some people, but hopefully enough people to drive demand for better transit.
- thefourthchime 3y agoI used to live in one in North Hollywood after I moved out from my parent's house in 1997. They focus on the utilitarian aspect, but they often had courtyards and a pool. The new standards for cheap living, the 5 over 1 apartments are more packed in and don't often have pools.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoReally? Most of those 5/1s have an internal courtyard area with a pool it seems. A lot even have things like a full gym. Sometimes even guest parking.
- atom-morgan 3y agoYep. I've lived in a few of these over the years and every single one had a courtyard/pool, grilling area, gym, and a guest parking section.
- PopAlongKid 3y agoI've never heard these called "dingbats" even though I lived in such a building in Oakland many years ago. What I do know them as is "soft story" apartments, due to the likelihood of collapse of the living quarters over the car ports in an earthquake. (In my case, I lived in a unit that was not actually over a car port, but still would probably have suffered collateral damage.) Seems odd the article did not mention it, here is one that does discuss dingbats and the earthquake risk they pose. https://www.kcrw.com/news/articles/what-it-will-take-to-earthquake-proof-l-a-s-most-vulnerable-apartment-buildings https://www.kcrw.com/news/articles/what-it-will-take-to-eart... Edit: I see now TFA does mention soft story earthquake risk, I didn't see it beause of the web site delay in showing me the entire article. "during earthquakes, there’s an unsettling amount of shaking, thanks to the soft-story carport construction. (That said, dingbats have seen a wave of recent retrofits with strengthened seismic codes). "
- bastardoperator 3y agoIf you've been in these neighborhoods there is only one thing that matters, parking, and it's virtually non-existent.
- Thorrez 3y agoIsn't there parking under the apartment?
- cf100clunk 3y agoSomewhat conceptually related from almost the same era, the Vancouver Special: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Special https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Special Take a long, thin lot in a rapidly redeveloping inner city area, put a conventional home sideways onto the lot with scarce room to spare, change the entrance ways to suit, and bob's your uncle. Unlike the L.A. Dingbats, the Vancouver Specials usually had the parking overhang at the back, if at all.
- lytfyre 3y agoI think another notable difference is that Vancouver Specials are nominally single family detached homes, but the design does lend itself to turning the main floor into a decently sized, above ground rental suite. All without requiring the kind of major renovations that cause city inspections.
- cf100clunk 3y agoAgreed, and a permutation of what you describe is the conversion of side-by-side duplex Vancouver Specials, particulary in Burnaby, into four-plexes by doing the same upstairs-downstairs split.
- shoo 3y agoIn Australia these are known as six-pack flats. https://assemblepapers.com.au/2019/07/16/six-pack-living-type-street-apartment/ https://assemblepapers.com.au/2019/07/16/six-pack-living-typ... > > The six-pack is the unsung hero of Australia’s vernacular architecture. The humble walk-up apartment building, with that distinctive boxy, Lego look in red or cream brick, first started springing up in the 1930s around Australian suburbs – wealthy, poor and middling alike. The construction of six-packs reached its crescendo in the postwar period, when thousands of owners replaced the footprint of a detached house on a single lot with a long and thin two- and three-storey apartment building, always sans elevator. > Jack Chen has carefully renovated a 33 sqm apartment in a modest walk-up block in Richmond, showing what a six-pack flat can do.
- ravenstine 3y agoThe one in the photo is probably one of the nicest looking "dingbats" in LA I've ever seen. Most of them don't look that charmingly kitschy or have paint anywhere near that fresh. The typical LA dingbat is a shade of gray brought on by road dust covering whitewash with no one to care enough to hose it down every now and then. While there are some that actually are well taken care of, the majority of are reminiscent of brutalist Soviet architecture; although much of said architecture somehow manages to be more appealing. They often look as if they were built way back when I Love Lucy was still being filmed and haven't seen much if any love since. Though I just disparaged dingbats, I believe it's more of them that we actually need right now, albeit with some modern flare. Perhaps they don't even have to be true "dingbats", but simply smaller apartment complexes that are simultaneously affordable but not decrepit. Unless I'm simply not seeing it, no meaningful number of such apartments are being built around LA. Practically every new development is luxury apartments with starting prices in the high $2000s, and it's almost irrelevant what neighborhood you look at. The amount of regulatory overhead for development in California, from the state down to the municipality, incentivizes developers to build luxury apartments because those have the best chance of at least breaking even after years of back and forth. Municipalities subsidize these developments because they supposedly raise the potential value of the area in general, bringing in residents with lots of spending money. And we wonder why fewer young people are bothering to move out of mom and dad's home.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoThey're ugly trash, and they often go right up to the sidewalk as depicted in that picture. They are NOT what the city needs; although lies to the contrary drove the passage of corrupt legislation to allow developers to build 10 units where a single house stands... with no permits needed or local review or override possible. Meanwhile, boarded-up Macy's stores, the dying malls they anchor, and the vast parking lots growing weeds around them stand empty. Those sites have already suffered the costs of density, with every tree cut down and the ground paved over. But politicians have targeted already-residental neighborhoods for destruction instead, against popular opinion. L.A. is ugly and barren enough without more Kleenex boxes like these "dingbats" lining the streets. This never-ending hysteria about "the housing shortage" is an excuse for more graft perpetrated by politicians and the developers who own them. There's plenty of opportunity to build housing in L.A. without destroying single-family neighborhoods. But that just won't deliver the easy profits that building permit-free offers to developers, and to the corporations that are buying up entire neighborhoods. Which is another problem the state is ignoring. As corporations buy entire tracts, already-difficult home ownership is going to become IMPOSSIBLE for future generations... denying them the greatest opportunity to build wealth throughout their lives. Corporations don't die and hand their houses down or turn them over to new families. Disgusting scams all around.