Lifestyle
'The only thing still left.' Volunteers race to save Altadena's vintage tiles from the bulldozers
The team of masons, covered in dust and sweat, had been working in the ruins of the Altadena house for hours when a shout echoed across the wreckage.
Volunteer Devon Douglas emerged from a pit of rubble that had once been the living room, staggering under the weight of a concrete slab more than a foot wide.
“It’s a stair,” Douglas said, turning toward homeowner Valerie Elachi. “A whole stair, and all the tiles.”
It was a bittersweet moment for Elachi, 76, who had danced down that tiled staircase when she and her husband first saw the home during an open house in the early 1980s.
She watched from her patio wall as five volunteers chiseled the historic tiles from the stairs and from her massive living room fireplace. Having something to salvage was a gift, she thought, and a bitter reminder of all they had lost.
Cliff Douglas uses a chisel to gently remove historic Batchelder tiles from the fireplace of a 1923 Altadena home built by noted local architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Gray.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The work on Elachi’s home was being done by a ragtag group of volunteers who call their collective Save the Tiles. The group is racing to remove and preserve thousands of vintage and historically significant tiles from the Eaton fire burn zone before the properties are bulldozed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As part of their work to remove debris and level lots for rebuilding, the Army Corps tears down everything left standing on a property. That includes chimneys and fireplaces, which can be left structurally weakened by fire.
“Anything you haven’t removed is gone forever,” said Eric Garland, one of the Save the Tiles organizers.
The volunteers have preserved the tiles from about 50 homes, and have about 150 left on their list. Already, they’ve had one close call, removing the tiles from one home just two days before the Army Corps arrived.
Finding enough skilled masons was the group’s first challenge. Now, their biggest hurdle is tracking down the homeowners and getting their permission to remove tiles from their properties.
A team of volunteers is using public records to trace homeowners, but they’re hitting a lot of dead ends. Property records generally don’t contain any contact information, and when they do, the phone numbers are often out of date. In some cases, the numbers ring to landlines that burned down.
“There will be a day, soon, when we wake up and there are no houses in our queue,” Garland said, “even though we know there are dozens left.”
The Batchelder tiles removed from Valerie Elachi’s fireplace were placed in a cardboard box before being cleaned and packed for long-term storage.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The group’s last-ditch effort to reach homeowners is a letter. Mail is still being forwarded, Garland figured, so maybe it was worth a shot.
“Dear displaced neighbor,” the letter begins. “… We are just volunteers and Altadena neighbors desperate to reach you because we want to rescue your historic fireplace tiles for free. That’s it. No strings. Just trying to save what’s left of beautiful Altadena and bring some joy.”
:::
Garland embarked on the tile rescue mission after a walk through Altadena with his teenage daughter.
Their house survived the Eaton fire, but many on their street did not, including their neighbor Fred’s 1924 Spanish-style house. Amid the rubble, they spotted his century-old fireplace, its gray, brown and beige tiles still intact.
“That beautiful fireplace is all they have left,” Garland’s daughter said.
Garland emailed the neighborhood list-serv to ask whether anyone was saving the tiles. One response sent him to Douglas, who had written on Reddit that her father, Cliff, a professional mason, was volunteering to remove tiles from ruined homes for free.
The teams joined forces. In early February, they gathered dozens of volunteers in the parking lot of an Aldi grocery store in Altadena. Garland and fellow volunteer organizer Stanley Zucker handed out printed maps of the burn zone and sent small groups out on foot, telling them to stick to the sidewalks and photograph any tile that looked remotely historic.
In two days, the volunteers completed an ad-hoc architectural survey of thousands of burned properties. They whittled down the list to more than 200 homes with Arts and Crafts tile, many by the famous Pasadena artisan Ernest Batchelder and one of his main competitors, Claycraft.
First produced on the banks of the Arroyo Seco in 1910, Batchelder tiles were a key part of the California Arts and Crafts movement, a return-to-nature style that was a response to the ornate designs of the Victorian era and the industrialization of American cities.
Most Batchelder tiles are in private homes, but they can also be found on the Pasadena Playhouse’s courtyard fountain, the floors of Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church and the lobby of the downtown Los Angeles Fine Arts Building on 7th Street. (One of his largest surviving commissions, the 1914 Dutch Chocolate Shop in downtown, is generally closed to the public.)
California in the early 20th century was rich with clay and with cultural influence, said Amy Green of Silverlake Conservation, a firm that repairs and restores historic tile. In addition to the Arts and Crafts movement, tile artists began producing a wide variety of works inspired by traditional Mexican and Indigenous designs, as well as European styles like Delft.
Devon Douglas, daughter of professional mason Cliff Douglas, inspects a Mayan-style Batchelder tile that had just been removed from a fireplace.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“It reflects who and what we are,” Green said. “A very interesting mix of people that bring different aesthetics and skills to our work.”
Batchelder tiles can be palm-sized or larger, with muted matte finishes and understated glazes. A company catalog from 1923 described the tiles as “luminous and mellow in character, somewhat akin to the quality of a piece of old tapestry.”
They could be ordered through a catalog and were relatively affordable, said Anuja Navare, the director of collections at the Pasadena Museum of History, which maintains a private registry of homes with Batchelder tiles. Many middle-class families splurged a little and installed them in new bungalows in the 1910s and 1920s.
“He made beauty available to a person with modest means,” Navare said.
The work of Batchelder and his competitors spread to thousands of homes, businesses and civic institutions across Southern California.
American tastes changed, and, by the end of World War II, many of the tile companies had gone under. Arts-and-crafts tiles were painted over or ripped out in favor of the avocado greens and burnt oranges of the 1970s.
But the tiles have come back into vogue in the last two decades and have developed a cult following among design enthusiasts. Actress Diane Keaton has renovated entire homes with historic tiles, and preservationists have been known to dumpster dive to save Batchelder tiles from the landfill.
A single salvaged tile can sell for more than $200. A fully intact hearth and mantle can fetch 100 times that.
Early on, the Save the Tiles group was on high alert for looters in the burn zone. Most people would drive past the ruins of a home without a second look at the fireplace, but a select few know what to look for.
Cliff Douglas, the mason, said he had assessed several fireplaces along one street and returned to find the tiles gone. It was impossible to know, he said, whether the tiles had been removed by the homeowners or by someone else.
The group tackled the most visible fireplaces first, including those on corner lots. One volunteer with Hollywood set-building experience built false fronts to disguise fireplaces as any other fire debris.
The tiles must be removed by trained masons, and Save the Tiles now has four crews ready every day, made up of volunteers and workers whose employers are covering their wages. The group plans to start paying the masons from a GoFundMe that has now raised more than $100,000.
Cliff Douglas inspects a historic fireplace covered in Batchelder and Grueby tiles.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
About 20 volunteers learned from Green how to properly clean, catalog and store the tiles. Some cracked tiles will still need to be professionally restored, which will cost money, but a lot of the work can be done by amateurs, Garland said.
Some of them are sitting in boxes on a side porch at Garland’s mother’s house, and others are in a climate-controlled warehouse in Harbor City donated by a friend in the tile industry. The tiles will wait until homeowners are ready to take them back.
The power of the project, Green said, is that the hearth has such importance in the home: “It provides warmth,” she said. “It’s where you gather.”
:::
Despite the pressure of the bulldozers moving closer, removing the tiles is delicate work that can’t be rushed.
On a recent weekend, ceramicist Jose Nonato stood in the rubble of a three-bedroom home along East Altadena Drive, his hair, forearms and apron coated in dust. The third-generation ceramicist from Mexico City saw a Facebook post about the rescue effort and showed up with his tools. He had been working for hours in the sun on his 30th wedding anniversary to extract tiles surrounding a fireplace.
The tiles had been fired once, a hundred years ago, in kilns that reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, Nonato said. He said the Eaton fire had thrown them into thermal shock. They could crumble at any moment.
Nonato laid his chisel against the mortar and gingerly began to tap the top of the tool with a hammer. He gently pried loose a tile the size of a paperback book and wiped his hand across the dusty surface. A faint green hue shone through — a Batchelder.
By the end of the day, Nonato had rescued about 90% of the tiles and laid them on a blanket in the driveway in the same pattern as the fireplace. A few were broken and held together by red duct tape, but those would be repaired. Soon, the tiles would be cleaned, boxed and stored for the homeowners, who planned to rebuild.
“This is basically the only thing still left,” Nonato said. “This, and memories.”
:::
Elachi, the Altadena homeowner, had initially hoped that the tile volunteers could shore up the massive Batchelder fireplace in her living room so the home could be rebuilt around it.
From left, Cliff Douglas and his assistants Martin Vargas, Jorge Vargas and Roberto Murillo remove debris from the hearth of a home in Altadena.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
To her disappointment, Cliff Douglas told her that the mortar had been weakened in the fire. Everything would have to come down, he said, or the Army Corps would take it down themselves.
Elachi and her husband raised their daughter in the 1923 Pueblo Revival-style home and spent four decades caring for the property, embracing its Southwestern style and finding furniture and art that, along with the pink adobe walls and wood beams above the windows, would have looked at home in Santa Fe.
“This house was like another child to us,” Elachi said.
The fire had taken almost all of it: her husband’s memorabilia from 15 years as the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, their ceramics and furniture, all their photographs and books. The loss felt overwhelming and enraging. They hope to rebuild, but aren’t sure yet whether they will.
Mara is a single mother of two in Minnesota. She and her family have depended on SNAP benefits to make ends meet.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
Although Mara is unemployed, she is busier than ever.
When she is not taking care of her two children, Mara is at her desk applying for jobs. She is surveying her belongings to see what she can pawn off to buy toiletries. Or she is sifting through bills, calculating which ones can wait and which need to be paid right away.
Soon, Mara, a single mom in Minnesota, may have another task on her busy schedule: figuring out how to afford food for her and her family.
That’s because of new work requirements for people receiving aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps.
“It would be so beyond hard” to lose SNAP benefits, Mara said. “Without SNAP, there’s no funds for food.” Mara asked for her last name to be withheld given the stigma tied to receiving government assistance. She is also worried that speaking publicly will affect her chances of getting a job.
Previously, SNAP recipients with children under 18 were exempt from work requirements mandating that recipients work, volunteer or participate in job training at least 80 hours a month. But now, under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that exemption only applies to those with children under 14 — which is how old Mara’s youngest child turned in December.
“It would be so beyond hard” to lose SNAP benefits, Mara said.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
The Trump administration has argued that the mission of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program has failed.
“SNAP was intended to be temporary help for those who encounter tough times. Now, it’s become so bloated that it is leaving fewer resources for those who truly need help,” the White House said in a statement in June.
But policy experts say the SNAP changes do not fully take into account the unique challenges faced by single parents like Mara or the sluggish job market in many parts of the country. They argue that losing food assistance will only create more barriers for recipients struggling to find work.
The timeline for implementing the new SNAP policy varies based on state and county. In Mara’s home state of Minnesota, recipients who don’t qualify for an exemption or meet work requirements will be at risk of losing assistance as early as April 1. Others may have more months depending on when they next need to certify they are eligible for benefits.
Over 100 job applications
Mara imagined she would have a job by now.
It was August when she was let go from her part-time administrative assistant role due to her workplace restructuring. Since then, Mara estimates that she has applied for over 100 positions. She has also attended job fairs and taken free workshops on resume writing.
She has been working since high school, she said, but “ I’ve never been out of work for more than one month, so it’s very difficult.”
Mara spends time working at the computer at CareerForce, a resource for job seekers in Minnesota, on March 4.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
Although she misses her old job, Mara said it didn’t pay enough to support her and her kids, so she relied on SNAP benefits.
Many recipients are part of the low-wage labor market, where job security is often unpredictable and turnover tends to be high, according to Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who has studied SNAP extensively.
“SNAP is supposed to be there to help people smooth that and not let the bottom fall out when they experience job loss,” she said. “And this policy doesn’t account for that at all.”
Mara’s lowest point came in November when the government shutdown led to disruptions in SNAP benefits. Not only was she searching for a new job, but she was constantly figuring out where to get her family’s next meal.
“I might be looking for food stuff during the day when I should have been looking for a job,” she said. “Then, I’m trying to make up that time in the evening after my kids go to bed.”
During the pause, Mara turned to food banks, which revealed other challenges. First, food pantries do not always provide enough for an adult and two growing teenagers, she said. Second, they often lack gluten-free foods, which is essential for her daughter who has celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes digestive problems if gluten is consumed. Gluten-free products tend to be more expensive.
If Mara loses access to SNAP again because of the new work requirements, she fears another stretch of long days spent looking for the right food and enough to feed her family.
“I would be so reliant on looking for food shelves or food banks,” she said. “There would not be time to even live.”
“We’re going to see increases in poverty. We’re going to see increases in food insecurity”
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 2.4 million people will lose food benefits in a typical month over the next decade as a result of the new SNAP requirements — including 300,000 parents like Mara with children 14 or older.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center, says many of the affected recipients will be single mothers who make up a majority of single parent households in the U.S. She added that the changes target a group that often lacks or struggles to afford a support system to help care for their children.
“How can they have a full-time job when they need to pick up their children [for] various activities?” she said. “And they are working — just not enough hours because they need to be there present for their children.”
Mara shops for groceries at a local discount grocery store.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
The new law also imposes work requirements on veterans, homeless people, young adults aging out of foster care, and able-bodied adults without dependents from ages 55 to 64.
It also toughened the criteria for waiving work requirements for recipients in areas with high unemployment. Previously, there were multiple ways to determine a weak labor market and secure a waiver. Now, it only applies to places with an unemployment rate above 10%. (Alaska and Hawaii have a different measure.)
For those who fail to meet the work requirement, SNAP provides assistance for up to three months within a three-year span. But Bauer from the Brookings Institution argues that it is not enough and the impact of SNAP changes will be widespread.
“We’re going to see increases in poverty. We’re going to see increases in food insecurity. We’re going to see increasing strain on the charitable food sector,” she said.
Mara holds her favorite anchor ring, which carries the inscription, “God for me provide thee.”
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
As anxiety hangs over her head, Mara tries to put on a brave face for her children. She does not want them to worry, explaining that her recent struggles have reminded her how tough life can get as an adult.
“I remind them it’s not their responsibility and they’re not accountable for me or for what’s happening,” she said. “I say, just know you get to be a kid.”
Dylan Dreyer
Savannah Will Likely Come Back … Just Not Sure When
Published
TMZ.com
Dylan Dreyer is giving a small update on her embattled “Today” co-host, Savannah Guthrie, as the search continues for Savannah’s mom, Nancy — telling TMZ she does believe she’ll likely return to the show at some point.
We caught Dylan leaving NBC Tuesday afternoon, and she said while she thinks Savannah will come back, the timing is totally unclear — adding everyone at the show is simply giving her the space she needs because they care about her so much.
TMZ.com
Dylan also reflected on Savannah’s emotional visit to the “TODAY” studio last Thursday, saying the hug they shared was something they both really needed in that moment.
Catch the full clip — Dylan says the visit was incredibly emotional, adding Savannah clearly wants to get back to some sense of normal life … she just doesn’t quite know how yet.
Still, Savannah managed a few smiles during the brief stop by the studio, doing her best to keep moving forward during an incredibly tough time.
TMZ.com
As we reported, Nancy was taken from her Tucson home in the middle of the night on February 1. She was last seen entering the house just before 10 PM on January 31 after dinner with her daughter Annie and Annie’s husband, Tommaso Cioni.
Kevin Kline plays actor Richard Bean, and Laura Linney is his sister-in-law Kristen, in American Classic.
David Giesbrecht/MGM+
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David Giesbrecht/MGM+
American Classic is a hidden gem, in more ways than one. It’s hidden because it’s on MGM+, a stand-alone streaming service that, let’s face it, most people don’t have. But MGM+ is available without subscription for a seven-day free trial, on its website or through Prime Video and Roku. And you should find and watch American Classic, because it’s an absolutely charming and wonderful TV jewel.
Charming, in the way it brings small towns and ordinary people to life, as in Northern Exposure. Wonderful, in the way it reflects the joys of local theater productions, as in Slings & Arrows, and the American Playhouse production of Kurt Vonnegut’s Who Am I This Time?
The creators of American Classic are Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin. Martin co-wrote and co-created Slings & Arrows, so that comparison comes easily. And back in the early 1980s, Who Am I This Time? was about people who transformed onstage from ordinary citizens into extraordinary performers. It’s a conceit that works only if you have brilliant actors to bring it to life convincingly. That American Playhouse production had two young actors — Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon — so yes, it worked. And American Classic, with its mix of veteran and young actors, does, too.
American Classic begins with Kevin Kline, as Shakespearean actor Richard Bean, confronting a New York Times drama critic about his negative opening-night review of Richard’s King Lear. The next day, Richard’s agent, played by Tony Shalhoub, calls Richard in to tell him his tantrum was captured by cellphone and went viral, and that he has to lay low for a while.
Richard returns home to the small town of Millersburg, Pa., where his parents ran a local theater. Almost everyone we meet is a treasure. His father, who has bouts of dementia, is played by Len Cariou, who starred on Broadway in Sweeney Todd. Richard’s brother, Jon, is played by Jon Tenney of The Closer, and his wife, Kristen, is played by the great Laura Linney, from Ozark and John Adams.
Things get even more complicated because the old theater is now a dinner theater, filling its schedule with performances by touring regional companies. Its survival is at risk, so Richard decides to save the theater by mounting a new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, casting the local small-town residents to play … local small-town residents.
Miranda, Richard’s college-bound niece, continues the family theatrical tradition — and Nell Verlaque, the young actress who plays her, has a breakout role here. She’s terrific — funny, touching, totally natural. And when she takes the stage as Emily in Our Town, she’s heart-wrenching. Playwright Wilder is served magnificently here — and so is William Shakespeare, whose works and words Kline tackles in more than one inspirational scene in this series.
I don’t want to reveal too much about the conflicts, and surprises, in American Classic, but please trust me: The more episodes you watch, the better it gets. The characters evolve, and go in unexpected directions and pairings. Kline’s Richard starts out thinking about only himself, but ends up just the opposite. And if, as Shakespeare wrote, the play’s the thing, the thing here is, the plays we see, and the soliloquies we hear, are spellbinding.
And there’s plenty of fun to be had outside the classics in American Classic. The table reads are the most delightful since the ones in Only Murders in the Building. The dinner-table arguments are the most explosive since the ones in The Bear. Some scenes are take-your-breath-away dramatic. Others are infectiously silly, as when Richard works with a cast member forced upon him by the angel of this new Our Town production.
Take the effort to find, and watch, American Classic. It’ll remind you why, when it’s this good, it’s easy to love the theater. And television.
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