Bertran Smith Acres of Books, 240 South Long Beach Blvd.

Long Beach isn’t known for its architecture, but perhaps it should be. With waves of development following the 1933 earthquake and the completion of the 710 freeway, there are plenty of eye-pleasing examples of Art Deco (Bertrand Smith Acres of Books, above) and Modernist (International Tower, below) design–and then some. Here are some interesting edifices, none more than a few blocks from the Psychic Temple.

International Tower, 660 East Ocean Blvd.

Many of the older buildings had throwback styles to begin with. The Lafayette Complex juxtaposes vintage Spanish Renaissance (Campbell Apartments, right) and French Moderne (Lafayette Hotel, center) with newer, International (Lafayette expansion, left) aesthetics.

Lafayette Complex, 130-140 Linden Ave.

The Farmers & Merchants Bank and Tower were built with Italian Renaissance Revival details in 1923 and 1925, respectively. (The bank is on the other side of the tower.)

Farmers & Merchants Bank and Tower, 302-320 Pine Ave.

There are fantastic new structures, too. Bikestation Long Beach was designed and has been expanded twice over by modern architect Fernando Vazquez over to accommodate and facilitate the growing numbers of cyclists in Long Beach.

Bikestation, 105 The Promenade North

More to come…

Before renovation began, the Psychic Temple looked rather bleak from the outside. However, the interior was once quite colorful. Even after the initial demolition, many of the remaining surfaces revealed a springlike palette.

Because the Psychic Temple’s first floor has been made over so many times over its 100+ years, it has lost its historical value. Nonetheless, we want to share how it looked before the renovation begins. Above: Low-budget American Hotel signage and entrance.

On the far left was a shoe repair shop, complete with antiquated machinery. Some demolition and excavation had already taken place by the time these photos were taken during the summer of 2011.

The last business to occupy the right and center locations was a nail and beauty salon. There wasn’t much gear left, but the hand-painted and drawn lettering was classic.

Jan Robert van Dijs at the Arts Building on 3rd St. (August 2011)

Jan Robert van Dijs is the namesake of JR van Dijs, Inc. Drawing from his experience and expertise in constructing large-scale, high-end projects in New York, Paris, London, Italy, and Asia, he and his crew are committed to changing the way people perceive and experience Long Beach, CA, one old structure–more often two or three–at a time.

van Dijs and his team have restored and updated buildings from beloved historic structures such as the Ebell Club and Art Theatre to more recent landmarks such as the former compound of SST Records (where his offices are now located). I met Jan across the street from there at yet another one of his projects, the Berlin coffeehouse. We talked about his career and his team’s upcoming work on the Psychic Temple.

PT: How did a guy like you, who has worked in many of the world’s great cities, wind up settling down in Long Beach?
JRvD: For a number of years, I was in construction management and worked internationally but lived here. Then about nine years ago, I decided to stop. I really enjoyed it, but the travel was getting to me, my daughter was about to be born, and I knew that things were changing.

PT: Can you share your views on the preservation and restoration of old buildings?
JRvD: Everything is political, social, and economic in this world that we live in. But for me, it’s very personal. This is the city I live in and this is the city I work in, and it just so happens that my personal passions align with my profession.

I like old buildings. I believe in them from a practical standpoint and from a redevelopment standpoint. They give texture to streetscapes and allow for more interesting projects. I think the people who want to tear everything down and build anew are shortsighted and narrow-minded. That might be easier, but it’s not necessarily better. And in the long run, if you’re looking to salvage communities and rebuild your inner city core, restoration is the best way to do it. I believe that passionately.

Psychic Temple entrance (circa 2011)

PT: When did you become aware of the American Hotel?
JRvD: The city bought the building in 2000. At the time, it was operated as a flophouse-type hotel, and I don’t know if they intended to salvage the building.

Shortly after they bought it, they entered negotiations with some hotel groups. The process got far enough that I was asked to go to several planning and redevelopment meetings to serve as a liaison for the historical community to see what was being planned.

PT: Can you describe any of the proposed plans?
JRvD: There was one developer who said, “I can’t save the building. All I’m going to do is save the façade.” The reality was that he wanted to buy the whole lot and was just keeping the façade as a token, but that fell through.

PT: And how did your team become more directly involved with the building’s future?
JRvD: Four and a half years ago, I wrote a letter to the city. I said, “The building is degrading to a point where it will be unsalvageable unless you do something soon.  It’s still a significant historical building, but water’s pouring in and it’s a mess.”

Three years ago, we were issued an exclusive negotiating agreement and got pretty far down the road in our partnership with the city, to make and market creative offices upstairs and a restaurant and bar downstairs. We went to the historical department and got a Certificate of Appropriateness. Everything was moving forward until January 2011 when the wheels fell off due to the state budget crisis. We re-proposed different things to the city, but the reality was that every time we came close to reaching some kind of an agreement, the rules changed again. It was just a big mess.

Psychic Temple first floor (circa 2011)

PT: And when did interTrend enter the picture?
JRvD: Julia (Huang from interTrend) discovered Berlin during an art walk. She realized it would be a nice place to have lunch and brought some of her staff the next day. There were like eight of them. From here, she looked across the street at our office and said, “That is what I’d like our loft to look like.”

I was in my conference room and they were all lined up along the window, looking in. So I went out and said that we had some spaces in back. But they needed more square footage than that. The American Hotel was the only building I was working on that was big enough. I was pretty honest about it from the beginning, and said we had a lot of issues to work out with the city.

PT: Can you describe working with Julia and interTrend?
JRvD: Very few people are capable of seeing that kind of building in that condition, but they saw the building and showed a shocking amount of vision. Philosophically, we share the same vision in terms of our businesses: we want to be on the street because we want to have a connection with our community. You don’t make connections by pulling into a parking garage, going up an elevator, and looking out of a ninth floor window.

“You can hardly see the glass,” says Long Beach-based historian Stan Poe pointing at a section of sidewalk in front of the Psychic Temple. “But those were prisms that would increase the light and illuminate the basement. We don’t know what it was used for…”

At the turn of the century when electricity wasn’t common, daylight was treasured, and could be used and extended in basements via a grid of circular glass lenses in concrete reinforced by cold-twisted steel rods. A Chicago-based company’s description of the process can be read at glassian.org.

Examples of vault lights (many of which are broken and filled) can still be spotted in Downtown Los Angeles, around New York City, and a strip of Victoria, British Columbia. Poe says, “When I was a kid, I was always afraid to walk on them because they’d open!”

After the Psychic Temple had been demoed and before reconstruction began, I took a walk around the building with local author, expert, and member of many preservation committees Stan Poe. He gave me the building’s history (link) and pointed out some architectural details, as well as some hints as to what architect Jan Van Dijs might have in store for the restoration.

“The Broadway façade was slightly out of style when it was built. Long Beach was that way even then! But the front is what is designated as historic, which give Jan room to work.

“We discovered a big parapet. At the top of the building is a big cornice, and above that the parapet, which was a short wall of chimneys coming off the top. They probably fell off or were taken off during the earthquake, but we found a picture of them that Jan’s going to copy.”

“This was an arched opening. We think that when the Temple of the Holy Kiss was opened in 1905, the first floor may have been one great big open area with stairs in back. The stairs on the far end were added in the 1920s.

“Permits were real loosy goosy, and when the earthquake happened a lot of stuff was thrown of city hall as trash. I think the architect’s name was Henry Starbuck. He also built the Masonic temple down the street. “

“These iron pieces are interesting. They’re interesting because they have an Eastlake design from the 1890s. They must have been sitting around the foundry and brought in for the building. Until Jan got in there, we didn’t know they existed. The front was all black reflective tile. They were added at some point.”

“There was another hotel here that was built in the teens. It came smack up next to the wall and they connected. You can see the fill-in.”

“The staircase isn’t grand but it’s nice enough to cut it. Over the stairs is a skylight that was painted out but once lit up the whole thing.”

“The little rooms had just enough space for a single bed. There’s been a lot of speculation about what went on in them, but people would check in to have their souls cleaned overnight.”

After I pick up Southern California historian, educator, and resident Stan Poe from his Long Beach home, he seems to have a story for every old building that we pass on the drive between the historic Naples area (which is actually patterned after Venice, down to the canals) and our decidedly grittier Downtown destination. But the site of the old American Hotel still turns out to provide one of the city’s most colorful stories. We walk around the boarded-up structure so Poe can point out details of architectural interest (viewable here) and then sit down at the café across the street so he can tell me about its past.

With old newspaper articles, some personal notes, and a photocopied graduate school essay at one hand and a Diet Coke at the other, the member and veteran of numerous preservation committees reels off names, dates, and events that I can only hope to make sense of.

The American Hotel originally was built in 1905, with the intention of being a “Psychic Temple” for the Society of New or Practical Psychology by its founder Dr. William C. Price. The mesmerist, hypnotist, and self-described psychologist was born in Tennessee in 1863 and became a lecturer and demonstrator who traveled all over the South. His five kids were born in five different states. Poe adds, “I don’t know if he was run out of each town or if he left on his own.”

To escape legal problems in Atlanta, Price came out west. He made a stop in San Francisco and gave a series of lectures and classes in Los Angeles before creating the headquarters for what was sometimes called the Holy Kiss Society. In a newspaper article, follower Rosella Bates explained, “Dr. Price says he can take a woman in his arms with the purest thoughts and can kiss a girl without a thought of evil—so strong is his self control.”

Price also practiced a sort of acupressure in which he healed people by strategically touching certain nerves, and preached male continence as a form of contraception and a spiritual practice. Noting that another one of his favorite subjects was derived from a series of 1852 lectures on “Electrical Psychology,” linking electricity to the virgin birth among other things. Poe offers, “I wonder if there was something in those corner rooms that involved electricity? It would be the same time that Tesla was working…”

Price showed interest in many things but charity wasn’t one of them. To rent a nice house in the neighborhood cost about $20 a month. He charged $10 for a lesson. And ultimately it was business and not religion that led to Price’s downfall. He advised followers to mortgage their homes to invest in his efforts. His students were free to invest freely; others had to pay $10 for a lecture beforehand. But in 1908, he filed suit against investors for unpaid stock payments. In turn, stockholders claimed that they were under the spell of his hypnotism and telepathic influence.

The sides deadlocked, and the building was ultimately sold to Price’s legal opponents to pay off a settlement. Dr. Price’s name was removed from the plate glass with acid and taken off the cornerstone with a chisel. Anna Sewell purchased the building in 1911 for $2,910.09, renaming it as American Hotel and beginning its short descent into being a longtime flophouse with modest businesses on the ground floor and eventually vacant husk of a building in the center of Downtown Long Beach.

As for Price, Poe says, in 1919 he left Long Beach for Los Angeles, where he started the New School for Applied Christian Psychology. Things continued to unravel for him in 1923, when Price was arrested for fraud and divorced for adultery. He died in 1925.