How did I end up here? It’s September 2021, midpandemic. It’s year two of working remote, and I’m going stir-crazy from all this aimless … sitting I’ve been doing. So I decide to take a bike ride to this extravagant shrine at the cemetery next to the Burbank Airport. You know, the one with the scale model of the Columbia space shuttle mounted in front of it? Turns out, the structure has a fascinating history involving Burbank’s long involvement with the aviation industry, Churrigueresque-style architecture and D.W. Griffith’s infamous film “Intolerance.”
While I was reading about the shrine, officially called the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation, I noticed that it was on the National Register, a list of places across the country that are deemed significant by the National Park Service. If a lifelong Angeleno like me had never heard of this spot before, how many more landmarks must be hiding in plain sight?
Visiting that shrine flipped a switch in me. I used to spend most of my free time at record stores. Now I go to house museums and take photographs of 1920s bungalow courts. It’s kept me connected with my city during the pandemic, reignited my interest in architecture and introduced me to people and neighborhoods I didn’t know existed. It’s also been a great source of adventures for my family. While my 6-year-old daughter may not share my newfound love for clinker-brick retaining walls, she did make up a killer National Register theme song at the top of Angels Flight Railway.
So far I’ve visited 174 of the nearly 600 National Register sites in LA. Here are 10 that are well worth visiting, all for very different reasons.
One important PSA: Several of the below sites are private residences. So if you gawk, please respect the stewards of these historic homes and gawk from the sidewalk. Let’s not break any trespassing laws, mmkay? Happy landmarking.