Los Angeles’ “dingbat” apartments are a kitschy piece of the past
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Los Angeles’ “dingbat” apartments are a kitschy piece of the past
When architect and writer Wendy Gilmartin was in her early 20s, she lived in West Hollywood in what’s known as a dingbat apartment. While she fondly remembered the lighting and wood floors, she especially appreciated the social atmosphere at the building.
“I had a writer neighbor, and I had a musician neighbor, and I had an older Ukrainian immigrant grandma who lived next door to us,” she said. “It was a really nice cross-section of LA’s working class.”
Built primarily in the 1950s and ’60s, dingbat apartments were simple, efficient wood structures with stucco walls. What set them apart were the garage ports located underneath one or two levels of apartments.
“They are built for a population of dwellers who, each and every one has a car,” said Gilmartin.
The other big difference? Ornate decorations on the sides of the buildings. “They’re kind of kitschy, and what you’ll find, for instance, might be a smattering of tile across the front or a name,” said Gilmartin. Examples include buildings with names like the Cortez or Casa Bella, a dingbat that was featured in the 1998 film, “The Slums of Beverly Hills.”
In fact, these names were the inspiration for the name “dingbat.” The term is attributed to architect Francis Ventre, who, according to Gilmartin, came up with the name because of these graphic flourishes, but it was architectural critic Reyner Banham who popularized the term in his book “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.”
And while the building style became ubiquitous in Los Angeles, it’s not without controversy. A 2014 effort led by then-LA Mayor Eric Garcetti found that dingbats were especially susceptible to earthquake damage due to their design. And while many have since been retrofitted, Gilmartin has a sense that they’re becoming an “obsolete character” in the region.
At the same time, the structures were an example of multifamily Modernist architecture in a period when most such buildings were single-family homes.
“The dingbats certainly aren’t the houses by Frank Lloyd Wright or Richard Neutra, the single-family home from the midcentury that brought us all these qualities that you see every time you open up Dwell magazine,” said Gilmartin. “But they are a kind of easy, simply made structure that covers all the bases for someone who needs a roof over their head and needs a place to park their car.”
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