Featured image credit: Downtowngal
You’ll find some real dingbats in California real estate. Now, before anyone gets too defensive, we’re not calling anyone names. We’re referring instead to those two-story apartments pitched over carports like a blocky, upside-down capital letter “L”. You know the ones, often caked in stucco, brandished with atom-age ornamentation, soaked in affordable mid-century optimism, and bearing kitschy names like “The Flamingo” or “The Capri”. If you’re still unsure, cast your eyes in the direction of Mar Vista CA, home to a particularly impressive enclave of dingbats. Again, we mean the buildings. They’re a sign of their time, sure. But they’ve also earned an important place in California’s architectural history.
What Defines a Dingbat?
Architecture critic Reyner Banham is believed to be the first to use the term “dingbat” in print in his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, though he credits the original term to architect Francis Ventre. By Ventre’s definition, a dingbat is a two-story walk-up apartment block constructed from wood and slathered in stucco, maintaining a basic rectangular form, smooth surfaces, thin steel columns, and extensive overhangs harboring parking beneath. The name was chosen as a reference to the kitschy starbursts that often adorned their facades, echoing the typographic dingbat characters.
It’s no surprise that dingbats are relics of midcentury architecture. By the post-war building boom of the late 1950s and ‘60s, they were already a prominent building style around Southern California (and much of the southwest United States). Factors that made dingbats so attractive included:
- Affordability
- Building material advancement
- Housing urgency
- Zoning
Why Are Dingbats So Prevalent in Mar Vista CA?
While the American Southwest embraced the dingbat, nowhere seemed to welcome the style quite like the neighborhood of Mar Vista CA. A lot of this came down to zoning. While Mar Vista holds a proliferation of single-family homes to the north, the area south of Venice Boulevard was specifically zoned to accommodate apartment buildings. It was the perfect environment for dingbats to roost. For one, its abundance of flat lots made rapid construction of dingbats easier. But its loose zoning restrictions also meant developers could stack as many units as possible over a row of parking spaces.
Respect for the Dingbats
While it’s easy to dismiss these boxy buildings as aging relics, they actually bring a certain economic diversity to the Mar Vista CA neighborhood. And that’s somewhat uncommon for LA’s westside. Since most of LA’s dingbats were built well before 1973, they are subject to the city’s local rent control ordinance. Long-term tenants tend to enjoy rent that’s significantly below market value, providing a much-needed option for lower-income renters. Wander up to the north of Mar Vista, and you’ll find homes that regularly sell for over $1 million. But the area’s dingbats continue to offer opportunities to those who would otherwise be priced out.
Even without the affordability, dingbats may deserve more respect than they’ve been given over the last few decades. Authors Thurman Grant and Joshua G. Stein championed the dingbat in 2016, writing in their book, Dingbat 2.0, that the odd building style could be “considered an icon of the 20th century, in all its kitschy glory.” They posit that the destruction of these original dingbats wipes away an essential part of the city’s structural history.
Preparing Dingbats for Modern Standards
Of course, LA is a city in the midst of a profound housing crisis. And that leaves little room for sentimentality. Because of this, in areas perhaps less accommodating to the dingbat design than Mar Vista CA, dingbats are razed by the dozens to clear the way for multifamily complexes with subterranean parking garages.
Perhaps most importantly, dingbats rely on columns that have been deemed vulnerable to collapse in earthquakes. When the Northridge earthquake hit in 1994, and 200 soft-story buildings shook to the ground, dingbats were particularly vulnerable. The good news is that dingbats can be retrofitted for stronger reinforcement. Los Angeles has even made it a requirement.
The True Future Foreshadowed by the Dingbat
It can be easy to dismiss the dingbats of Mar Vista CA, but these housing solutions were affordably available when people needed them the most. They tell the tale of a city responding to a housing crisis with creativity and speed, a lesson that we could use today. Maybe the starburst futurism of the dingbat was looking ahead, but in a way that is only now becoming clear.
With a brand that says as much as JohnHart’s, Senior Copywriter Seth Styles never finds himself at a loss for words. Responsible for maintaining the voice of the company, he spends each day drafting marketing materials, blogs, bios, and agent resources that speak from the company’s collective mind and Hart… errr, heart.
Having spent over a decade in creative roles across a variety of industries, Seth brings with him vast experience in SEO practices, digital marketing, and all manner of professional writing with particular strength in blogging, content creation, and brand building. Gratitude, passion, and sincerity remain core tenets of his unwavering work ethic. The landscape of the industry changes daily, paralleling JohnHart’s efforts to {re}define real estate, but Seth works to maintain the company’s consistent message while offering both agents and clients a new echelon of service.
When not preserving the JohnHart essence in stirring copy, Seth puts his efforts into writing and illustrating an ongoing series entitled The Death of Romance. In addition, he adores spending quality time with his girlfriend and Romeo (his long-haired chihuahua mix), watching ‘70s and ‘80s horror movies, and reading (with a particular penchant for Victorian horror novels and authors Yukio Mishima and Bret Easton Ellis). He also occasionally records music as the vocalist and songwriter for his glam rock band, Peppermint Pumpkin.
