HOW HISTORIC PLACES CAN TRANSFORM AMERICA’S CITIES (photography by Stephen Schafer)

Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places Can Transform America's Cities​

Author Ken Bernstein, who oversees Los Angeles’s Office of Historic Resources, tells the comprehensive story of how historic preservation has revived Los Angeles neighborhoods, created a Downtown renaissance, and guided the future of the city. Under Bernstein’s leadership, Los Angeles has developed one of the most successful historic preservation programs in the nation, culminating with the completion of the nation’s most ambitious citywide survey of historic resources. Bernstein showcases Los Angeles as a model for other cities, demonstrating how preservation can revitalize neighborhoods and build community.

Preserving Los Angeles​ is an authoritative chronicle of urban transformation, a guide for citizens and urban practitioners alike who hope to preserve the unique culture of their own cities.​ ​Bernstein’s informative text is richly illustrated with more than 300 full-color images by prominent architectural photographer Stephen Schafer. The photography-heavy appendix devoted to historic sites can serve as a field guide to hundreds of the city’s most notable locations.

Newer than many American cities, Los Angeles has a remarkable collection of architectural resources in all styles, reflecting the legacy of notable architects from the past 150 years. As one of the most diverse cities in the world, Los Angeles is breaking new ground in its approach to historic preservation, extending beyond the preservation of significant architecture, to identifying and protecting the places of social and cultural meaning to Los Angeles’s communities. ​Preserving Los Angeles​ illuminates a Los Angeles that will surprise even longtime Angelenos—highlighting dozens of lesser-known buildings, neighborhoods, and places in every corner of the city that have been “found” by SurveyLA, the first-ever city-wide survey of Los Angeles’s historic resources.

Ken Bernstein,​ a principal city planner for the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, oversees the city’s Office of Historic Resources, which is responsible for Los Angeles’s historic preservation policies and programs, and he leads the department’s Urban Design Studio, which works to elevate the quality of design for private development projects and major civic investments. The lead staff member for the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, Ken has overseen the completion of SurveyLA, a multi-year city-wide survey of historic resources, and has led the city’s efforts to create a comprehensive historic preservation program. Before joining the Department of City Planning, Ken was director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, the largest local non-profit historic preservation organization in the country.

Stephen Schafer ​is an architectural photographer with a preservation distraction. Over the course of his thirty-plus year career, he has been drawn to vintage buildings great and small. He now crisscrosses America documenting significant places for the National Register of Historic Places and the Historic American Buildings Survey collection at the Library of Congress.