FOR THOSE OF you interested in going even deeper, the City of Los Angeles has embarked on an expansive project to ensure that Los Angeles' built history is properly counted and cataloged.
Survey L.A., a project launched by the city's Office of Historical Resources, is an expansive, multi-layered endeavor that christens the city's first comprehensive preservation program.
Eighty-five percent of Los Angeles's structures have not been cataloged. Unlike most big cities, Los Angeles hasn't had an organized and systemized way of keeping track of what's on the ground. Survey L.A. is training and paring teams of architects, historians, students and volunteers to traverse the city and catalog each and every structure. The idea behind this effort is to begin to understand Los Angeles's history through the various structures (and the various uses of those structures over time) Ken Bernstein, head of the Office of Historical Resources told me during an interview for an L.A. Times story I was working on that one of the primary impetus of this program was the constant "11th hour fights" to save historically significant buildings from being torn down under the cover of night. Once a building is counted and cataloged in the database it will be easier to find out more about what its historical relevance is without scrambling at the last minute.
Moreover, Bernstein hopes, is that we begin to understand our city's history through its neighborhoods, subdivisions, industries and distinct melange of architecture. For those of you who might like to participate in learning about your city literally from the ground up click here .
Below is part-one of a series of three videos that will tell you a little more about the project.
-- L.G.
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