Disco and Diversity in Armenian L.A.
Cindy Olnick 0:00
Today on Save As a warning: this episode may cause hunger and the urge to dance.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:14
Welcome to Save As a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the work of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Trudi Sandmeier.
Cindy Olnick 0:24
And I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:26
So Cindy.
Cindy Olnick 0:27
Yes, Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:28
So we started this season talking about a little town named Yettem in the Central Valley, which means paradise or Garden of Eden in Armenian. Today, we’re going to visit LA’s Armenian heritage, looking at this same group of folks, but a little more locally.
Cindy Olnick 0:47
And with a lot of unexpected elements here. You talked with Erik Van Breene, who just finished his thesis like 45 minutes ago, and he has a lot of cool things to share.
Trudi Sandmeier 1:02
It was a pretty wide ranging conversation. And it was really fun. And we talked about food and music and all kinds of things that you may not have thought of, or maybe places you might have seen driving around the city that you didn’t even know what they were or what they’re why they were significant.
Cindy Olnick 1:23
No idea. No idea. And I wish I’d had a warning frankly, because after I heard this, I you know, it’s hard to eat and dance at the same time. But I couldn’t help myself.
Trudi Sandmeier 1:35
Well, you are an overachiever. As we know.
Cindy Olnick 1:38
I wasn’t chewing gum, though. I was I might have been patting my head. I can’t remember. So anyway, folks, enjoy safely. Please enjoy this episode. Enjoy this chat between Trudi and Erik Van Breene.
Trudi Sandmeier 1:57
Erik finished his thesis really just a matter of weeks ago. So we are feeling very cutting edge here on Save As to have him with us today. So welcome, Erik to Save As. It’s lovely to have you here today.
Erik Van Breene 2:11
Hi, TrudiI How’s it going?
Trudi Sandmeier 2:13
Can you share the title of your thesis with us?
Erik Van Breene 2:16
Yeah, so, my title is Not So Little Armenia: Conserving Armenian Heritage Sites in Los Angeles.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:22
Mm hmm. So why not so little Armenia? What does that mean?
Erik Van Breene 2:25
I chose not so little Armenia because Little Armenia is a neighborhood in Hollywood. But the Armenian community is much larger than that. And, in fact, it’s the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia itself.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:38
You mean that across all of Los Angeles, right, not just in Glendale, which is where everyone thinks the Armenian community is centered.
Erik Van Breene 2:45
Correct. The Armenian community is all throughout LA County, with pockets in different neighborhoods, in areas that most people wouldn’t even expect the Armenian community to be.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:55
What was it about the Armenian experience in Los Angeles that drew you to this thesis topic?
Erik Van Breene 3:01
I am half Armenian on my mother’s side. My great-grandparents came in through the ports on the East Coast where they landed and settled, but eventually made their way out west, originally settling in Fresno, where there was a large Armenian population. My great-grandparents came to LA in the 1920s and 30s, making a new life for themselves after fleeing the massacres and genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
Trudi Sandmeier 3:28
So it’s a personal tale for you.
Erik Van Breene 3:31
Yep.
Trudi Sandmeier 3:31
When did the Armenian community really start here in Los Angeles?
Erik Van Breene 3:35
I found that there are two distinct waves of immigration to Los Angeles. There was the first that were genocide survivors. But that wave really gets cut off in the 1920s, with restrictive immigration acts, which limits the number of immigrants from outside of Western Europe. And that immigration act is enforced through the 1960s when we have more progressive immigration policy passed in 1965. With the passage of that policy, we see a new wave of immigration that happens, and these Armenians are primarily from throughout the Middle East, that were scattered after the genocide. So we have a big population coming from Lebanon caused by the Lebanese civil war. There’s also a large population of Armenians coming from Iran with the Iranian revolution in the 1970s, but also the Iran-Iraq war that was happening around the same time. Armenians are indigenous to Iran. So these were not necessarily Armenians that were scattered from the genocide. And then we have the Armenians coming from the former Soviet Union starting in the 1980s, and then 1990s, as the Soviet Union falls, and it opens up the doors for this wave to come in.
Trudi Sandmeier 4:48
One of the really interesting things in your thesis that I learned about were all the different neighborhoods that have pockets of Armenian community tucked away inside of them. So let’s talk a little bit about where the community started and where it moved to over time.
Erik Van Breene 5:07
The earliest communities I found were in South LA, also in Boyle Heights, and in Pasadena. And each of those enclaves had very unique properties to them, where they represented different demographics of Armenians. So, in Boyle Heights, primarily in what was called the Flats, it was Armenians from the Russian Empire, or Transcaucasian Armenians, as I refer to them in my thesis, and a lot of them were Molokan Armenians, who are a lesser known religious sect. And I actually didn’t even know that there were Armenians of this religious sect here in LA, in Pasadena. It was primarily Western Armenians from the region called Cilicia, or Colombia in Armenian. This is a region that’s in the southeast portion of Turkey on the Mediterranean coast. And then in South LA, you have a more general demographic of Armenians coming from different regions within the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t as specific as the other two. In Pasadena there’s still a large number of Armenians, but in South LA and Boyle Heights, those neighborhoods really experienced settlement migration where, we see the Boyle Heights communities starting to move more east. And today, that community exists — it’s in Montebello, primarily — and then in South LA, we had a migration that goes from South LA to West Adams into Inglewood. And it kind of disperses a little bit, once it gets to that point where the Armenian community, primarily second and third generation start to assimilate into the Anglo culture. So it’s not as strong as some of the enclaves we see today.
Trudi Sandmeier 6:56
So why is Hollywood called Little Armenia?
Erik Van Breene 6:59
In a 1923 thesis that was written there’s there’s a brief mention of Hollywood as having a pocket of Armenians, but it doesn’t seem to be too concentrated. That pocket really starts to form in the 1970s as Armenians from the Republic of Armenia come to LA and start settling. Through the 1980s and 90s it really starts to pick up as the Soviet Union collapses, and the Republic of Armenia experiences different economic crises.
Trudi Sandmeier 7:30
So everyone thinks about Glendale when they think about the Armenian community. Why is that? And did you talk about Glendale in your thesis?
Erik Van Breene 7:39
How could I not talk about Glendale in my thesis? There were some Armenians that settled in Glendale after the genocide, but the population stayed really small throughout the first half of the 20th century. And it wasn’t until the 1970s, where their median population really started to grow in Glendale.
Trudi Sandmeier 7:57
So all of these communities that are scattered around LA County have businesses and institutions and restaurants and infrastructure to support these local communities that have developed. Some of the early folks who came to Los Angeles, what kinds of businesses were they in? What were they doing?
Erik Van Breene 8:20
So the first or means that came to LA, were primarily in the rug business selling oriental rugs, which at the time were popular amongst wealthy Angelenos. Most of the earliest rug shops that are found were centered around Westlake, MacArthur Park and downtown.
Trudi Sandmeier 8:39
So there was a business hub in downtown Los Angeles. And where did folks live who worked in downtown LA?
Erik Van Breene 8:46
There are a lot of Armenians who lived in the South Central Avenue corridor, south of downtown. We see early Armenian churches in this neighborhood.
Trudi Sandmeier 8:55
What kinds of churches were they and are they still there?
Erik Van Breene 8:58
So the churches that were established in South LA were both Protestant and Armenian Apostolic, which is a Orthodox Christianity. The church buildings are primarily still there. The First Apostolic Church, it’s on East 20th Street. It’s now a Korean church, and so is the original Armenian Gethsemane Church, the overall trajectory of migration of these churches was super interesting. You can really see how the Armenian community moved, how different groups came together to form new congregations, that sort of thing.
Trudi Sandmeier 9:38
Let’s talk about a few of the cool sites that you discovered.
Erik Van Breene 9:40
I found the Molokan churches to be really interesting. There’s also a Molokan cemetery, out in East LA. That’s right next to the freeway interchange, where it looks like other cemeteries existed that were cut off during freeway construction.
Trudi Sandmeier 9:56
Yeah, we talked about some of those cemeteries in a episode not too long. ago featuring Rachel Trombetta’s work on the Jewish cemeteries of East LA. And they’re kind of all in this same neighborhood. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, I encourage you to do so. But back to our story here today. So what else did you find?
Erik Van Breene 10:15
Armenian schools, private schools are a really important component of the Armenian community here in Los Angeles. They’re often affiliated with different religious sects. They teach specifically Armenian culture that you wouldn’t get in public institutions. They focus on the Armenian language. So all the students become fluent in Armenian. They teach Armenian history, which isn’t covered in public schools. And the real focus of these institutions are the preservation of Armenian culture, at its root. It’s also important to note that schools are the byproducts of the second wave of immigration, because Armenians had gained a socio-economic foothold in the US allowing for more investment into these educational facilities. Originally, churches were the main place where Armenians were learning the language if they weren’t learning it at home. And often, that method failed, because it wasn’t focused enough and there wasn’t the discipline that you get in a standard educational system.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:20
Okay, so let’s talk about a few of the interesting businesses that you discovered.
Erik Van Breene 11:25
Yeah, the Armenian businesses are really interesting in LA or as I call it, the Armenian economy in Los Angeles. Maybe one of the most interesting businesses is Parseghian’s Records. Parseghian’s started around the 1980s. And it wasn’t just a record store, it kind of morphed into this. If you went to the shop back in the day, you would walk in and there was passport photos, all sorts of things that you wouldn’t expect to be one of the most iconic recording studios. In all of the Armenian diaspora. There were artists who came to record here from Iran, from the Republic of Armenia.
Trudi Sandmeier 12:08
So people came from around the world to record in this little record store.
Erik Van Breene 12:13
Yeah, people came from around the world and looking at it, you would just never expected it. It’s a small 1920s brick building a commercial storefront that’s just completely unassuming. But yet it was an icon of Armenian culture in the 1970s, 80s, 90s. The business is still going on. And it’s an audio-video shop now.
Trudi Sandmeier 12:35
So who recorded at the record store?
Erik Van Breene 12:38
I think one of the most iconic artists to record at Parseghian record store was Harout Pamboukjian, who is an icon throughout the Armenian diaspora to this day. I mean, he’s still around and I see him popping up all the time on Instagram.
Trudi Sandmeier 13:15
So a global rockstar, basically. One of the other really interesting things I learned reading your thesis was about the media presence of the Armenian community here in Los Angeles. It’s pretty significant. Let’s talk a little bit about that, like how many newspapers are there.
Erik Van Breene 13:32
So in Los Angeles, there’s a handful of newspapers that are still in publication, Asbarez being the most notable of them, which started up in Fresno, and in the 1970s, came down to Los Angeles. Originally, it was all Armenian, but some time ago, it switched over to being a bilingual publication. It’s one of those newspapers where you go into any Armenian market, you’ll see Asbarez.
Trudi Sandmeier 13:58
It’s not the only one, right?
Erik Van Breene 14:01
There’s a handful of newspapers. It’s interesting, a lot of them have connections to Armenian political parties, which I didn’t get into in this thesis. But then there’s also newspapers that sprung up in response to the political newspapers, where they just didn’t want anything to do with it. And they became more of social papers. And so we have the California Courier, which was an English newspaper for the Armenian community. It covers different local news for Armenians based in California.
Trudi Sandmeier 14:32
Another really interesting thing was this television station. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
Erik Van Breene 14:38
Horizon TV and Hollywood is a significant news outlet in the Armenian community. It was the first Armenian television news channel in the United States. And it’s connected to Asbarez in that. It is sponsored by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, which is one of the global Armenian political parties And it’s significant because it brought news of the Republic of Armenia here to Los Angeles. And it came about at a time when there was a lot of turmoil that was happening back in the Republic of Armenia. There’s the Spitak earthquake that happens, which displaces tens of thousands of Armenians. There’s the collapse of the Soviet Union that’s happening. There’s economic crises. So this was really an important way for Armenia to be brought to Los Angeles. A lot of the topics that were covered on Horizon weren’t covered anywhere on Western media at that time.
Trudi Sandmeier 15:36
Yeah. So it served a really important purpose for the community. Yep. Okay, so let’s talk about a few of the interesting restaurants and food related businesses.
Erik Van Breene 15:44
Food’s really interesting in that it tells the story of the diaspora in itself in ways other aspects of Armenian culture doesn’t necessarily tell. Food dishes are called different things, have different names with different diaspora groups, different ingredients. What a dish is made with in Armenia may not be the same that it’s made with in, say, Lebanon or Syria, because ingredients just aren’t the same, what’s grown in those regions. But in a lot of ways, these dishes connect us to our indigenous lands and connect us two times before the genocide. Food is really central to Armenian culture in that, you know, we gather around food all the time. If you ever go to an Armenian house, you’re offered plenty of food, it’s nonstop, but it’s really at its heart, a form of cultural preservation just like languages at the Armenian schools.
Trudi Sandmeier 16:37
Were there are a couple of restaurants or markets or bakeries, that really jumped out at you?
Erik Van Breene 16:44
I think maybe the two most well known Armenian restaurants in Los Angeles, Carousel and Raffi’s Place are two really important restaurants to talk about, They’re places where Armenian families gather and celebrate the milestones of life. And they both cater to different diaspora groups. Carousel is Lebanese Armenian, and Raffi’s is Persian Armenian. Slightly different food but Armenian nonetheless. It seems to be one of those things where Armenians can argue for hours about what’s Armenian food and what’s not. And here in LA, you just you get every diaspora group’s cuisine, and it’s just really amazing. If you ever go to these Armenian enclaves, there’s markets on every corner, catering to different groups. In Little Armenia, there’s Arbat Grocery, which is I believe it’s the oldest remaining market in Little Armenia. You also have Sahag Basturma which is a deli that specializes in basturma, a cured meat from Central Anatolia, or the Armenian Highlands. Harout, who’s the owner of Sahag Basturma is a third generation basturma maker. His family originated in Caesarea in Turkey. So basturma is a cured meat that is prepared with salt, and a mixture called fenugreek, which is a mix of cayenne pepper, paprika, pepper, cumin, and garlic that’s spread all over the outside of the meat, and it’s left to air dry and cure. As the late food critic Jonathan Gold once said, it’s one of the most powerful flavored cold cuts in the world.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:30
Well, Jonathan Gold said that then you know it’s true.
Erik Van Breene 18:33
There we go.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:34
So here’s an important question. When you were doing your research, did you eat at all of these restaurants and bakeries?
Erik Van Breene 18:40
I actually did.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:43
That’s the beauty of research my friends right there.
Erik Van Breene 18:46
I think it was every weekend I would go and eat something just as a way to motivate myself.
Trudi Sandmeier 18:50
Absolutely. In the name of research. You know, of course, you had to interview folks who own these restaurants and bakeries, and businesses and all of those things. Who else did you talk to you in the course of your research? How did you discover some of these spots?
Erik Van Breene 19:06
I talked to a number of people, people that I was connected to through family, people that I knew from the Heritage Conservation Program A big thank you to Ani and her grandmother who were just invaluable sources for my research. It was really amazing. I made a list of sites. And I sent it to Ani to do some fact checking. And next thing I know I got a text that her grandmother was connecting with all of her friends in Little Armenia to identify others.
Trudi Sandmeier 19:35
Oooh. The network. That’s amazing. So you got the grandma network.
Erik Van Breene 19:41
Oh, the Grandma network is clutch.
Trudi Sandmeier 19:43
Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome. I know a lot of the photos that you used in your thesis and we’ll feature a bunch of them on the website for this episode, were from you driving around to see these places and to explore these different communities. Was it fun to go out and see all these different places? And did you turn in unexpected corners in your research?
Erik Van Breene 20:08
I would say that driving around LA and taking these photos was probably my favorite part of writing this thesis. It allowed me to really understand migration patterns in the community, it was also really interesting to see sites that weren’t necessarily connected to the Armenian community anymore and had been repurposed. It’s the story of layered history that I think is so important to what we do.
Trudi Sandmeier 20:32
You found some really interesting things in the course of your research. But along the way, you compiled kind of a master list of all the sites that you could find that were related to the community. So how many ended up being on your list?
Erik Van Breene 20:48
So there’s 137 sites on that list. And that’s not to say that that’s all the sites in Los Angeles County. T here’s so many more sites that can make it on this list in different neighborhoods that I will didn’t cover in this thesis.
Trudi Sandmeier 21:01
So we’ve now talked about all these different kinds of places, you’ve, you’ve made a pretty impressive list. How do we acknowledge these places? How do we understand them as sites of significance to the Armenian community? What were some of the tools that you talked about in your thesis?
Erik Van Breene 21:18
So I think the first and probably most important tool that I talked about my thesis is the need for historic context statement for the Armenian community, not just here in Los Angeles, but throughout the state. There’s a sizable Armenian population that I think deserves to have a context written about them. It’s a really interesting and important history. It’s really multi-layered and complex. One historic context statement for one city, it needs much more research than just one.
Trudi Sandmeier 21:52
What were some of the other interesting ideas you had about ways to acknowledge and conserve the Armenian sites of significance in LA County,
Erik Van Breene 22:02
I think a mapping resource would be really important for preserving Armenian heritage here in Los Angeles, and the sites connected to it. There’s so many sites out there that could qualify. I mean, just on my list, I have 137. But, you know, there’s countless others out there that, that I didn’t uncover, and the different neighborhoods that maybe I didn’t touch in my thesis. But that’s not to say that those neighborhoods and enclaves don’t matter, they’re equally as important. And they deserve just as much research as the ones talked about in this paper. And with mapping, I think it needs to be community driven. I don’t think that this is something that can be done from outside the community, because these sites aren’t necessarily, you know, architecturally significant, where you can drive by and just, at a glance, be like, oh, that’s important, historic site. These are often unassuming buildings, that a lot of times have been altered throughout the decades, that don’t necessarily have the integrity that we talked about so much in heritage conservation. To me, at least, it’s not the building fabric that matters as much as the stories inside.
Trudi Sandmeier 23:15
There are some sites that are what we would think of as traditional landmarks, churches and things like that. But they’re not yet landmarks. Why is that?
Erik Van Breene 23:23
A lot of times from my interviews and from community meetings that I went to, you know, a lot of people just don’t know that landmarking is an option as a way to save historic places.
Trudi Sandmeier 23:35
I think there’s a couple of sites that you identified that are really obvious sites to landmark, like the record store, right?
Erik Van Breene 23:42
Yeah, I would love to see Parseghian’s landmarked. I think that historic resources in Little Armenia, are really important to pay attention to right now, as the community’s changing. There has been gentrification in the area. There’s a migration that’s happening right now. And I personally am afraid that a lot of these sites are going to be lost to time, if landmarking or some other form of heritage conservation doesn’t come in. I mean, to date, there’s hardly any Armenian representation in our field.
Trudi Sandmeier 24:15
I was excited to read just today that there’s some efforts to create a legacy business program in the city of Los Angeles, which doesn’t help all of these places, because of course, LA County is much beyond the city of LA, but certainly that’s a step in the right direction towards being able to help some of these small businesses stay in business and continue to serve the community.
Erik Van Breene 24:39
A legacy business program is really important to preserving not just Armenian heritage businesses, but all throughout Los Angeles, the different businesses that are in danger, whether they don’t have succession planning, or outside forces that are putting pressure on them right now. Especially through the pandemic.
Trudi Sandmeier 24:58
Yeah, a lot of businesses have gone under during COVID. So I want to thank you for coming and spending a little time talking to us about the Armenian resources in LA County. I know I learned a ton when I worked with you on this thesis and really excited to see what comes next.
Erik Van Breene 25:16
Thanks for having me, Trudy. This is something that I’m really excited and passionate about. And I was really happy that I could turn this into a thesis.
Trudi Sandmeier 25:25
Absolutely. Thanks, Eric.
Cindy Olnick 25:30
Trudi, thank you so much for that really great conversation with Erik, who by the way, we should note is now working at the Los Angeles Conservancy on their advocacy team. But wait, there’s more. You can visit our website at SaveAs.place. Go to the episode page for photos and links to very cool information including a video on LA’s Armenian disco scene of the 1970s by DJ Darone Sassounian, and dining in diaspora in Armenian food blog by Liana Aghajanian. You can also take our Save As survey if you haven’t already. You can still get a mug. Who doesn’t want a mug?
Trudi Sandmeier 26:12
Everyone wants a mug.
Cindy Olnick 26:21
Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of Save As. Tune in next time for a chat about bringing people from the margins to the center.
Laura Dominguez 26:28
How were people leaning on their heritage as a way of resisting that eliminatory impulse and saying we have a right to be, and we’re not just, it’s not just our physical presence, but it’s everything that we inherit and bring with us and embed in the land.
Cindy Olnick 26:43
If you haven’t already, please subscribe, review and tell a friend.
Trudi Sandmeier 26:48
This episode was produced by Willa Seidenberg and me. We had help from Chloe Cuffel and we want to give a big shout out to all the help we received from Lindsay Mulcahy who is a recent grad and an alumna here of Save As as well. Our original theme music is by Steven Conley Save As is a production of the heritage conservation program in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California.
