SurveyLA Historic Property Field Work Continues This Fall

A new round of field work began in Pacific Palisades, Brentwood and other Westside communities this fall as Los Angeles' first-ever comprehensive program to identify significant historic resources throughout the city continues.

According to the Office of Historic Resources, SurveyLA, which is the citywide survey aiming to be L.A.'s first comprehensive preservation program, all of the data collected from communities over the last few years in the MyHistoricLA workshops is now being provided to field surveyors who began field work in:

• Brentwood
• Pacific Palisades
• Bel Air
• Beverly Crest
• Westchester
• Playa del Rey

According to the Office of Historic Resources, while Los Angeles has over 1,000 local landmarks and 29 historic districts, as of 2005 only about 15 percent of the city had been surveyed, bringing risk to potential developers and property owners.

The project is partially funded by a $2.5 million grant from the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Christine Lazzaretto, principal for MyHistoricLA, told the Pacific Palisades Community Council recently that over the next several months, field surveyors in teams of two (either in a car or on foot) will going up and down each street in those neighborhoods taking photographs and entering information about individual properties into the SurveyLA database. All of this work is done from the public right-of-way.

She said that if you see survey teams in your neighborhood, feel free to ask questions. For those affiliated with community groups that have websites or newsletters, Lazzaretto added it might be helpful to let members of the community know that SurveyLA is going to begin work locally.

For this round of field work, the City of Los Angeles’ Office of Historic Resources has contracted with professional architectural historians from the consulting firms of Historic Resources Group, Galvin Preservation Associates and Architectural ResourcesGroup. As they begin work in the community, members of the field survey team may contact residents with follow-up questions about particular properties.

Information about properties and neighorhoods that was not submitted previously can still be sent in to be distributed to the survey teams in the field.

For more information on SurveyLA and its work, click here. For specifics on the project description, click here.

To submit information more easily about particular properties or neighborhoods, click here.

To speak to someone from the Office of Historic Resources, call 213-978-1191.