The mason team was covered in dust and sweat, and was always altadena The house lasted for hours as the shouts echoed over the wreckage.
Volunteer Devon Douglas originated from a rubble pit that once was a living room, more than a foot wide under the weight of concrete slabs.
“It’s a staircase,” Douglas said. “The whole staircase and all the tiles.”
It was a painful moment for Erachi, now 76, when she and her husband first saw the house in an open house in the early 1980s, she jumped off that tiled staircase.
She watched from the terrace wall as five volunteers chisel historic tiles from the stairs and the large living room fireplace. She thought that having something to be rescued was a gift, which reminded them of everything they had lost.
Cliff Douglas used chisels to gently remove historic scattered tiles from the fireplace of the Altadena house in 1923, built by famous architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Gray.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
A group of volunteers put the work of the Irachi home in the process of completing their collective rescue tiles. The team is working to remove and preserve thousands of antiques and historically important tiles Eaton Fire Combustion area before the combustion area U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As part of the effort to eliminate debris and rebuild debris, the Army tore off all the remaining properties. These include chimneys and fireplaces, which can be structurally weakened by fires.
“Everything you haven’t deleted has disappeared forever,” said Eric Garland, one of the organizers of the preservation tiles.
Volunteers kept the tiles in about 50 homes and had 150 left on their list. They already had a close call to remove the tiles from a home two days before the Army Corps arrived.
The first challenge for the group was to find enough skilled bricklayers. Now, their biggest obstacle is tracking homeowners and obtaining permission to remove tiles from their properties.
A team of volunteers is using public records to track homeowners, but they hit a lot of dead ends. Attribute records usually do not contain any contact information, and when they do so, phone numbers are usually not outdated on the date. In some cases, these numbers ring to the burned landlord.
“There will be one day soon, there will be no houses in our queue.
Wholesale tiles taken out of Valerie Elachi’s fireplace are placed in a cardboard box and are then cleaned and packaged for long-term storage.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The organization’s final effort to reach homeowners is a letter. Garland believes that the email is still being forwarded, so maybe it’s worth a try.
“Dear displaced neighbor,” the letter began. “…We are just volunteers and the Altadena neighbors are desperate to save your historic fireplace tiles.
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Garland and his teenage daughter traveled through Altadena and embarked on a tiles rescue mission.
Their house survived the Eaton fire, but many on the street did not include the 1924 Spanish-style house of neighbor Fred. Amid the rubble, they found his century-old fireplace, whose grey, brown and beige tiles remain intact.
Garland’s daughter said, “That beautiful fireplace is what they are left.”
Garland emailed a community checklist to ask if anyone saved the tiles. A response gave him to Douglas, who wrote on Reddit that her father, Cliff, was a professional Mason, volunteered to remove tiles from the ruined house for free.
Team join forces. In early February, they gathered dozens of volunteers in the parking lot of Aldi grocery store in Altadena. Garland and volunteer organizer Stanley Zucker distributed printed maps of the burn area and hiked to send teams to tell them to stick to the sidewalk and shoot any tiles that looked out of reach.
Within two days, volunteers completed thousands of temporary construction surveys of burned properties. They reduced the list to more than 200 houses with craft tiles, many of which are famous Pasadena craftsman Ernest Batchelder and one of his main competitors, clay style.
First produced on the riverbank of Arroyo Seco in 1910, Batchelder Tiles is a key part of the California Arts and Crafts movement, a response to the ornate design of the Victorian era and the industrialization of urban America.
Most of the scattered tiles are in private residences, but they can also be found on the floor of the Pasadena’s patio fountain (Pasadena’s) All Anglican Churches and the lobby of the Fine Arts Building in Downtown Los Angeles on 7th Street. (In 1914, one of his largest surviving committees Dutch Chocolate Shop In the city center, it is usually not open to the public. )
Amy Green of Silverlake Conservation said that California in the early 20th century was full of clay and had cultural influence. In addition to the art and craft movement, tiling artists have also begun to produce a wide variety of works inspired by traditional Mexican and indigenous designs, as well as European styles such as Delft.
Devon Douglas, daughter of professional Mason Cliff Douglas, inspects Mayan-style batchelder tiles that have just been removed from the fireplace.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“It reflects who and what we are,” Green said. “It’s very interesting people who bring different aesthetics and skills to our work.”
The slate tiles can be palm-sized or come with a soft matte finish and a low-key glaze. A 1923 company catalog describes ceramic tiles as “a shiny and soft character, somewhat similar to the quality of an old tapestry.”
They can be ordered through the catalog and are relatively affordable. Pasadena History Museumit maintains a private house registration form with criticism. Many middle-class families splurged a little and installed it in new bungalows in the 1910s and 1920s.
“He provides beauty to a man with modest means,” Navare said.
Batchelder and its competitors’ work is distributed among thousands of homes, businesses and civic agencies in Southern California.
Tastes in the United States changed, and by the end of World War II, many ceramic tile companies had gone bankrupt. Art and craft tiles were painted or torn apart to support avocado vegetables and charred oranges from the 1970s.
However, over the past two decades, ceramic tiles have returned to fashion and have developed a follower among design enthusiasts. actor Diane Keaton The entire home has been renovated with historic ceramic tiles and is well known as a conservationist Trash bin diving To preserve the tiles of the tiles from the landfill.
A salvaged tiles are available for sale Over $200. A completely complete fireplace and mantle can take 100 times.
Earlier, the preservation tiles group was on high alert for the predators in the combustion zone. Most people drive past the ruins of their houses without a fireplace, but few people know what to look for.
Cliff Douglas of Mason said he had evaluated several fireplaces on a street and then returned to find the tiles disappeared. He said it was impossible to know whether it was the homeowner or someone else who removed the tiles.
The group first addressed the most obvious fireplace, including the one at the corner. A volunteer with Hollywood architecture experience has built a false front to cover up the fireplace, just like any other fire debris.
The tiles must be removed by trained masons, and now preserve the tiles, four crew members are prepared every day, made up of volunteers and workers whose employers are covering their wages. The group plans to start raising over $100,000 from GoFundMe to pay masons.
Cliff Douglas inspects a historic fireplace covered with critics and Grueby tiles.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
About 20 volunteers learned from the green how to properly clean, catalog and store tiles. Some cracked tiles still need professional repairs, which will cost money, but amateurs can do a lot of work.
Some of them sat in boxes on the side porch of Garland’s mother’s house, while others sat in a climate-controlled warehouse in the port city donated by a friend in the tiling industry. The tiles will wait until the homeowner is ready to bring them back.
Green said the power of the project is that the furnace is crucial in the house: “It provides warmth,” she said. “This is where you gather.”
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Even though the pressure of the bulldozer is getting closer, removing the tiles is still a subtle work and cannot be rushed.
On a recent weekend, potter Jose Nonato stood among the ruins of a three-bedroom house in Altadena Drive, his hair, forearms and apron were dusted. The third generation of pottery artists from Mexico City saw Facebook posts about the rescue work and showed up with his tools. He worked for several hours in the sunshine of his 30th anniversary to extract the tiles around the fireplace.
Nonato said that a hundred years ago, the tiles had been fired once, and the kiln reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. He said the Eaton fire threw them into the heat shock. They can collapse at any time.
Nonato placed the chisel on the mortar and carefully began to tap the top of the tool with a hammer. He gently pried open a paperback-sized tiles and wiped his hands with the dusty surface. A faint green tone shines – a critic.
By the end of the day, Nonato rescued about 90% of the tiles and placed them on a blanket in the driveway in the same way as the fireplace. Some people are broken and tied together by red tape, but can be fixed. Soon, clean, pack and store tiles for homeowners planning to rebuild.
“It’s basically the only thing left,” Nonato said. “It’s memory.”
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Altadena homeowner Elachi initially hoped that tile volunteers would be able to lay the large wholesaler fireplace in the living room so that the house could be rebuilt around the house.
From the left, Cliff Douglas and his assistants Martin Vargas, Jorge Vargas and Roberto Murillo cleared debris from the fireplace of Altadena’s house.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
To her disappointment, Cliff Douglas told her that the mortar was weakened in the fire. He said everything had to fall or the Army Corps would fall on its own.
Elachi and her husband raised their daughter in a 1923 Pueblo revival home, spent forty years caring for the property, embraced the Southwest style and found furniture and art, as well as pink Adobe walls and wooden beams above the windows, all available to watch in Santa Fe.
“This house is like another kid to us,” Elachi said.
The fire almost absorbed: her husband’s souvenir 15 years As director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they have ceramics and furniture, all photos and books. The loss felt overwhelming and intense. They want to rebuild, but are not sure if they will.
