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Home » Maltman Bungalows
Record HousesResidential Architecture

Maltman Bungalows

In sprawling Los Angeles, Drisko Studio Architects reinvent a vintage typology for the Maltman Bungalows.

Maltman Bungalows

With their shared driveways and dense siting, the bungalows have an authentic urban feel while creating a sense of community.

Photo © Benny Chan

Maltman Bungalows

Turning the single-family homes into condos would have been prohibitively expensive for the developers. Each bungalow was sold separately with its own piece of land.

Photo © Benny Chan

Maltman Bungalows

The 17 bungalows were left in disrepair by the 1990s. Renovated, each encompasses approximately 700 square feet.

Photo © Benny Chan

Maltman Bungalows

In 2004, L.A.’s city council passed the Small Lot Subdivision Ordinance allowing for greater density in the city.

Photo © Benny Chan

Maltman Bungalows

All one-bedroom houses (except one with two bedrooms), the bungalows come in three different layouts.

Photo © Benny Chan

Maltman Bungalows

All one-bedroom houses (except one with two bedrooms), the bungalows come in three different layouts.

Photo © Benny Chan

Maltman Bungalows

Image courtesy Drisko Studio Architects

Maltman Bungalows

Image courtesy Drisko Studio Architects

Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
Maltman Bungalows
April 1, 2008
Christopher Hawthorne
KEYWORDS Los Angeles
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Architects & Firms

Drisko Studio Architects

Los Angeles, California

Record Houses 2008

Glenburn House H16 Maltman Bungalows Palmyra House The Rolling Huts Wall House Dairy House Nora House VH r-10 gHouse

People/Products

You can find pretty much anything in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles: a pair of limited-edition sneakers, an obscure gourmet cheese, or a copy of The Da Vinci Code in Mandarin. What hasn’t been available for much of the past decade, as gentrification took full hold of the area, is a single-family house with any architectural appeal for less than about $800,000.

Thanks to a unique effort by the city’s planning department, a local developer, and a pair of preservation architects, that finally changed late last year with the opening—or rather the reopening—of the Maltman Bungalows, on Maltman Avenue, near the neighborhood’s southern edge. Built in 1926, the 17 bungalows line up in two neat rows on a moderately hilly piece of land less than 1⁄4 mile from a lively and walkable stretch of Sunset Boulevard. They make up one of the many “bungalow courts” built in and around Los Angeles in the early part of the 20th century.

Executed in a streamlined Spanish style by way of Irving Gill, with red-tile parapets and simple, elegant profiles, the one-bedroom bungalows measure roughly 700 square feet each. (There is a single two-bedroom unit.) Each has a modest front stoop, a tiny private yard, and an attached garage barely big enough to hold a Mini Cooper. The skyline of downtown Los Angeles, about 5 miles to the southeast, peeks over a nearby hill.

Designed as rental units by an architect whose name is lost to history, the Maltman bungalows had lost a good deal of their original charm by the 1990s. The same was true of other bungalow courts across the city. As Los Angeles grew denser during the past decade, however, and as apartment living grew more popular as an affordable alternative to soaring home prices and long commutes, officials in the city’s planning office started looking for ways to bring them back to life. The effort got a big boost when the city council, in late 2004, passed something called the Small-Lot Subdivision Ordinance. In certain neighborhoods already zoned for multifamily housing, the ordinance allowed single-family houses to be built—or existing rental units like the ones on Maltman to be converted to single-family status—on individual lots smaller than 5,000 square feet.

Though the ordinance was written partly to promote construction of new bungalow courts, it has been slow to catch on with developers. That sluggishness prompted planning officials to start encouraging a few open-minded developers to scout for existing courtyard complexes that might be converted into collections of modest single-family houses. 

Christopher Hawthorne is guest editor of this issue and the architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times.


People

Architect

Drisko Studio Architects, Inc.
1624 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90403
(310)828-1761
(310)828-9782

Kaitlin Drisko, Architect
Bob Knight, Architect

Engineer(s):

Structural Focus, Gardena, CA

Consultant(s)

Landscape:

TGP, Inc.
Landscape Architects
Encino, CA

Other:

Psomas
Santa Clarita, CA
(Civil Engineering & Entitlements)

General contractor:

Civic Enterprise

Photographer(s):

Benny Chan / fotoworks
323-730-0100

 

 

Products

Windows

Wood:

Westside Door & Moulding
Los Angeles, CA
Custom Manufactured by Paramount Windows

Doors

Wood doors:

Westside Door & Moulding
Los Angeles, CA
Custom manufactured by T.M. Cobb

Hardware

Locksets: 

Original (refinished by Astro Metal Polishing, North Hollywood, CA)

Hinges: 

Original (refinished by Astro Metal Polishing, North Hollywood, CA)

Closers:

Blumotion self-closing

Interior finishes

Cabinetwork and custom woodwork:

Cabinets Unlimited
Ventura, CA

Paints and stains:

Dunn-Edwards

Special surfacing:

Floor and wall tile:

Bathroom floor, shower, kitchen counters: “Revival” by Mission Tile West, South Pasadena, CA.

Fireplace tile by Walker Zanger

Resilient flooring:

Forbo Marmoleum(kitchen)
 

 

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