From the Imperial to the Mundane

They clamored for Wiener schnitzel. We prefer the fish taco. They had the beautiful blue Danube; we’ve got the Harbor Freeway. Their cultural luminaries included Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Bela Bartok. Ours are Frank Gehry, David Hockney and Shaq. They were a fractious, multihued society--a dozen distinct cultures in search of a common voice--that held together remarkably well for centuries, then imploded in an orgy of imperialist ambition and tribal bloodletting.

And we? Well, superficially, the 3.6 million of us who dwell in this City of the 21st Century might seem to have little in common with the 50 million inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But, as usual in Los Angeles, a lot depends on who’s along for the ride.

“It’s a whole different era, but with many of the same situations,” says James T. Rojas as he stares out the rear window of a Volvo 270, inching its way up the Wilshire corridor.

The occasion was a weekend excursion--part road trip, part mind’s-eye odyssey--spanning two very different civilizations. The impetus was the J. Paul Getty Museum’s recently opened exhibition, “Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1937.”

The participants were Wim de Wit, 52, head of special collections and visual resources at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, and one of the exhibition’s curators; Rojas, 40, an urban planner with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who gave a recent lecture at the Getty comparing L.A. and the Austro-Hungarian cities; and a reporter for The Times. The plan: to superimpose a vision of fin-de-siecle Central Europe onto the mutating movie screen of Los Angeles, as viewed through the aperture of a passing car’s windshield. The question on the table: How does architecture shape civic identity and vice versa.

The results? Some surprising parallels--and, not surprisingly, some pointed contrasts--between the vast, transnational Austro-Hungarian superstate, with its cream-puff palaces and equestrian statues, and this smoggy expanse of stucco bungalows and Carl’s Jr. outlets. “People may think about this as a staunchy kind of show, but it has many things that may affect them today,” says Rojas, an outgoing man with ink-black hair and a neatly manicured goatee.

De Wit, a lean, urbane Dutchman who has volunteered both his time and car for the afternoon, is already thinking of the future. “We’re going to need gas soon,” he says as he spins the Volvo west onto Sunset Boulevard.

On display through May 6, “Shaping the Great City” explores the urban scene in the last decades of the Hapsburg dynasty, which once ruled a chunk of Europe extending from the Balkans and northern Italy to southern Poland and the Swiss border. Among the cities in its imperial orbit were Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Krakow and Zagreb. Comprising architectural drawings, photographs, archival film clips and other materials, the show has drawn strong reviews and substantial crowds since its February debut.

A tentative travel route was discussed: Some obvious parallels between L.A. and its historic predecessors begged to be explored. In turn-of-the-century Vienna, the empire’s capital, two influential architects, Otto Wagner and Camillo Sitte, championed competing models of the modern metropolis. Wagner favored boundless cities laid out along precise, geometric grids, crammed with big, self-consciously important buildings; Sitte advocated a more human-scale, irregular urban fabric, with small parks beckoning pedestrians and picturesque vistas breaking up the relentless march of brick-and-mortar. “Wagner is Wilshire Boulevard, Sitte is Silver Lake,” de Wit says succinctly.

As the Volvo cruises into Westwood, a gantlet of high-rise apartment towers--most dressed in austere ‘70s minimalism, a few in postmodern drag--looms into view along Wilshire. Would Wagner have condoned this upscale architectural fashion parade?

“No, I don’t think so,” de Wit replies, keeping his eyes on the congested roadway, “because there’s too much design variety. Wagner wanted a city that was almost like a movie set.”

Rojas, leaning forward, puts the question in perspective. “Before Wagner, you had medieval cities,” he says. “The question facing 19th century planners was, ‘How do you make order, how do you make logic here? How do you superimpose a grid onto a medieval city and create a modern infrastructure?’ You wake up one day in 1900 and you suddenly have all these people. In medieval cities there were no street signs, there was no plan.”

Indeed, until the 1890s, many Central European cities were haphazard mazes cobbled together by royal decree and sheer accident. Then German engineers began tinkering with a new “science” of town planning and zoning, using “operational models” to organize and track urban growth and development.

By contrast, Rojas continues, in America “everyone just kind of threw down the grid. The Spaniards, their whole idea of the New World was to lay down the grid, to colonize it.”

De Wit chews this over at a stoplight. “But it’s hard to find the grid” in Los Angeles, he says, “because it’s all grown together and wound into each other. I think that’s one of the things I struggled with in coming here, is how to find the city. It’s only being here a while that you can understand it.”

Life in the Valley Was Compartmentalized

De Wit says his view of L.A. underwent a major perceptual shift when he moved from Encino three years ago. In the Valley, he explains, one of the few common reference points is Balboa Park, where he frequently schlepped his kids to soccer and baseball games. Back then his work, home and recreational lives were separated by miles of roadway--a phenomenon that was just beginning to bedevil European urban planners in the late 19th century.

Today, de Wit and his family live in Brentwood, slightly below the hill where the Getty sits. The museums, restaurants and other places they frequent are within relatively easy access. “We liked our house [in Encino], but it always felt so separate from the city. We always had to go through this hurdle of the Sepulveda Pass. Now, the city feels totally different.”

Rojas, whose grandparents emigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico, grew up across town in compact, kinetic East Los Angeles and today lives in a downtown loft apartment. He spent three years with the Peace Corps in Budapest after graduating from MIT in 1991 with master’s degrees in city planning and architectural studies.

“I compare Prague to San Francisco, and Budapest to Los Angeles,” says Rojas. “Budapest is bigger and more spread out. Prague, you go for a weekend, you can kind of put it together. If you come to L.A. for a weekend, you’ll never get it.”

One of Rojas’ particular interests is the way ethnic groups remake urban environments in their own image. For instance, when the Industrial Revolution reached Central Europe in the mid 1800s, masses of migrants from the Baltic region and the crumbling Ottoman Empire flooded into Vienna, Budapest and other cities in search of work. The newcomers’ presence was quickly reflected in the built environment through the use of such materials as brightly colored ceramic tiles and folk-art motifs.

Similarly, in today’s L.A., Rojas says that Mexican, Latino and Asian immigrants are adding new colors, foliage, signage and other embellishments to a sometimes generic and impersonal urbanscape. “They’re not intentionally coming here to reshape the city, but just by coming here they reshape it.”

Suddenly, Rojas gestures ahead. Rubbing elbows on the north side of Wilshire are three buildings that illustrate how a city’s Wagnerian ambitions can get waylaid by changing demographics. Scanning west to east, a no-frills 99 Cents Only store jostles with Johnie’s Coffee Shop, a classic Googie-style ‘50s diner that might have been built for a Jim Thompson film noir. Across Fairfax Avenue, the gold and black facade of the former Robinsons-May department store (now part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) thrusts its elegant profile like a socialite posing for paparazzi.

Rojas’ point couldn’t be plainer: Here, in one half-block of Wilshire, you can see the city retrofitting a fragment of its past while catering to millions of new immigrants demanding discount shops, not high-end department stores.

“Vienna had a million people,” Rojas says. “We have 10 million people [in L.A. County]. We have large Mexican populations, Asian populations, gay populations. Los Angeles has to reshape itself in a whole different way. It’s a whole different animal.”

In U.S., a Bias Against Multifamily Housing

De Wit pulls up to a parking meter on a side street next to LACMA. Our destination is the nearby Park La Brea apartments, the stylish cluster of mixed-height, medium-density dwellings that defines the surrounding neighborhood.

“This is very European,” Rojas says approvingly as we approach the gated complex. In the U.S., he continues, there’s often a cultural bias against multifamily housing, except in extremely high-density urban areas like Manhattan. “[We think] if you live in a housing project, you must be poor. But if you go to Vienna, it’s a whole different cachet.”

A sign halts us: “This property closed to the public.” The young security guard says he’ll have to call his supervisor before we proceed.

While we wait, de Wit observes that the complex likely was inspired by the early 20th century Garden City movement in Britain, which advocated medium-density housing built around semi-shared green space. Though it dates from a later architectural period, it could’ve been airlifted from Budapest or Zagreb, circa 1930. But with an important difference, Rojas adds. “In European cities, you have more social [interaction]. There’s nobody in the street here, you don’t see kids playing, you don’t see people out walking. That’s why you need a security guard.”

The supervisor arrives. “You guys are going to have to get in your car and follow me,” he says without smiling. Deciding we’ve seen enough, we head back to the car. A female jogger in purple shorts is the only pedestrian in sight.

Before leaving the neighborhood we swing by a 1930s private home designed by the Austrian-born architect Rudolf M. Schindler, whose work is receiving a retrospective this spring at downtown’s Museum of Contemporary Art. A student of Otto Wagner, Schindler came to Los Angeles in 1914 to work with Frank Lloyd Wright on the Hollyhock House. His sensibility fused Germanic, geometric precision with the funky, open-ended gestalt of his adopted L.A.

“It’s very geometric, but it’s very romantic,” says de Wit, gazing at the deceptively simple white structure. “He made it not consciously perfect. You could imagine something that wasn’t totally finished.”

Silver Lake, our next stop, lies just past a nightmarish intersection where Beverly Boulevard slams into Virgil and Temple streets. Some locals call it “the Bermuda Triangle.” De Wit finds a gas station and stops to refuel. Signs advertising fried chicken, doughnuts, exterminators and auto body parts amp up the visual cacophony.

“This is like the ubiquitous L.A. intersection,” de Wit yells over the traffic. “There’s nothing to identify because there’s way too much information.” Rojas, who had been looking a little queasy in the back seat, offers to take over the driving. De Wit accepts.

The Volvo shoots through a Hollywood Freeway underpass and up Silver Lake Boulevard, past a man selling oranges out of a shopping cart. Then another underpass, a 7-Eleven, a cafe where latter-day Bohemians sit absorbing the afternoon sun and ambient sophistication, and finally the sculpted oasis of the Silver Lake reservoir.

If the Wilshire District impresses and inspires, Silver Lake charms and seduces. But L.A., having among the lowest per capita amounts of green space among major U.S. cities, needs a dozen Silver Lakes.

As the neighborhood’s tranquil side streets give way to the screeching buses and pulsing tiendas of Echo Park, however, De Wit is invigorated. “When I look at this neighborhood, there is a feeling that there is an entire life in the city,” he says. It’s not just the vigorous architectural mix, he explains, but the hybrid population. “When you live in Europe, as a Dutchman I can look at someone and say, ‘He looks German,’ or ‘He looks Belgian.’ There’s a very clear distinction. And we don’t have that here, thank God.”

Racial profiling likely wouldn’t have played well in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had an unusually high rate of ethnic inter-marriage. Ruled by the arch-conservative Hapsburg clan and administered by powerful bureaucrats (who didn’t have to worry about irate citizens’ groups or environmental impact statements), Central Europe’s cities were both cosmopolitan and parochial, sophisticated yet steeped in backward-looking folk ways.

One art historian has described them as “cultural battlegrounds” of “competing linguistic, ethnic, religious and national traditions,” where a dozen or more languages--German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Greek, Polish, Serbian, Turkish, Magyar--jockeyed for supremacy.

Though politically rigid, the empire was culturally pluralistic, an exotic pastiche of clashing costumes, cuisines, ideologies, myths and architectural styles, from Gothic through Baroque to high Modernism. United by strategic intermarriage between dynasties the empire’s A-list cities were less stable but more diverse than, say, London or Paris. Imagine L.A. plopped down in the middle of the Corn Belt and you’ve got an idea how the empire’s ethnic makeup compared with its more homogenous Western European neighbors.

This image resonates as Rojas threads his way into Boyle Heights, the vibrant but economically patchy East L.A. neighborhood shaped by successive waves of Eastern European Jews, Mexicans and Japanese. Passing by White Memorial Hospital, where he was born, Rojas points out his favorite taco stand and a quintet of mariachis. Then he backtracks to a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe that his grandfather built many decades ago in the frontyard of his parents’ former home. It’s still standing.

“This is a very people-oriented kind of place,” he says with an edge of pride. “In the 1850s, in Central Europe, the rich lived in the cities and the poor lived in the countryside. If you look at Los Angeles now, who lives in the grid? The working class. And who’s in the hills? The rich people.”

A few minutes later, over carne asada sopas at King Taco on Cesar Chavez Boulevard, someone wonders aloud what Wagner and Sitte would’ve made of it all. De Wit shakes his head. “They would have been so lost here.”

Wagner’s grandiose vision of the clockwork-efficient city certainly seems far away as we sweep through downtown on the Harbor, past the unfinished shell of the Belmont Learning Complex. As evening fog engulfs the Volvo, Rojas’ thoughts return to Boyle Heights.

“If we could make that [area] better,” he says hopefully, “we could make the whole city better. The essence of the city is there. It’s just about making it better and stronger, not creating a whole new place. I think that’s kind of the problem with L.A.: It’s always reinventing itself, never really understanding what it’s about.”

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“Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1937,” continues through May 6 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive. Call (310) 440-7300 for reservations and information.