What follows is my latest “Ask Silver Lake” for the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council‘s newsletter (with a few different images). If you have any questions about Silver Lake, leave them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list. I’ll list the current topic list after the post.
ASK SILVER LAKE — THE MATTACHINE STEPS
Recently, a few readers of “Ask Silver Lake” have requested more information about Silver Lake’s Mattachine Steps — a public stairway that connects upper and lower Cove Avenue. Given their significance and with June being Pride Month, I thought it would be an appropriate subject for June’s “Ask Silver Lake.”
MATTACHINE STEPS
While there are exceptions, most of Silver Lake’s (and Los Angeles’s) public stairways have only colloquial names. In 2012, the stairs previously usually referred to as the Cove Avenue Stairs were officially designated the Mattachine Steps. The name was a reference to the Mattachine Foundation. The stairway’s connection to the organization stems from its location next to the former residence of Mattachine Foundation co-founder, Harry Hay. Hay was an English immigrant and Communist organizer who came to Silver Lake in 1942. In 1948, he founded Bachelors Anonymous at his residence at 2328 Cove Avenue. In 1950, the group morphed into the Mattachine Foundation, one of the first gay rights organizations. Its founding members were Hay, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, James Gruber, Konrad Stevens, and Rudi Gernreich.
In 1953, the FBI opened an internal security investigation of the Mattachine Foundation. As a result, the founding members all resigned. Under new, more conservative leadership, the organization continued as the Mattachine Society. The society began publishing The Mattachine Review in 1955 and Mattachine chapters were formed in several states. The National Mattachine Society relocated their headquarters from Los Angeles to San Francisco around 1957. The San Francisco Mattachine was dissolved in 1967.
After the Mattachine Society decamped to San Francisco, gay civil rights efforts continued to march forward — with Silver Lake often leading the way. In July 1966, a more radical gay rights group called P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) formed. In February 1967, P.R.I.D.E. famously organized a protest against police brutality outside of Silver Lake’s Black Cat Tavern. The first permitted Pride Parade took place in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970.
JULIAN ELTINGE STEPS
One staircase over from the Mattachine Steps lived another Silver Lake trailblazer, Julian Eltinge. Eltinge, in the language of the day, a “female impersonator.” Nowadays we might recognize them as America’s first drag superstar. Born William Julian Dalton, Eltinge began performing publicly in drag at the age of ten. Already a star of Vaudeville and Broadway, Eltinge next wanted to enter film. Edendale was then the center of West Coast filmmaking, Eltinge settled there and Eltinge commissioned the architectural firm of Pierpont and Davis to design for him a grand residence at 2327 Fargo Street named Villa Capistrano. He moved into the mansion in 1918 and lived there with his cousin, Edgar, his chauffeur, Adolph, his cook, Frank, an English bulldog given to him by King Edward VII, and his beloved mother, Edna.
Eltinge starred, in drag, in several films: Cousin Lucy (1914), Crinoline Girl (1914), The Countess Charming (1917), The Clever Mrs. Carfax (1917), Her Grace, The Vampire (1917), The Widow’s Might (1918), Princess Martini (1918), An Adventuress (1920), Madame Behave (1925), The Fascinating Widow (1925), and Maid to Order (1931). As Eltinge aged, film roles dried up and Hollywood’s adoption of the Hays Code in 1934 put an end to anything that even hinted at homosexuality or other “deviances.” A bad investment led Eltinge to sell Villa Capistrano in 1939. He was trying to buy it back when he died in 1941.
FUTURE STAIR-NAMING EFFORTS
In July, the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council Governing Board will vote on a motion requesting the designation of the Julian Eltinge Steps. [Update: It was approved unanimously]. It additionally requests the installation of a stanchion to inform visitors to the stairway of Julian Eltinge’s significance. If the city follows through, it will be the fourth Silver Lake stairway to receive an official designation — following the designations of the Music Box Steps (1994), the Mattachine Steps (2012), and Esther’s Steps (2015). With over fifty such stair streets in Silver Lake, which would you like to see named, what would you like to see them named, and why?
As promised, here’s a list of current questions, requests and inquiries for “Ask Silver Lake”
- Crestmount and Antonio Moreno
- Disney’s Hyperion Studio (Gelson’s)
- Do you know if the red car path will come back for walkers?
- The Elliot Smith mural (Solutions!)
- The Garbutt House and Hathaway Estates
- Gay bars past and present
- Gregory Ain
- Haven of Rest (the ship-shaped studio)
- Holyland Exhibition
- The How House
- If Silver Lake’s not in the Eastside, where is it?
- I love that you’re highlighting local clubs!!!!!!! I would love to hear about ALLL the silverlake Micro communities
- KBLT (Silver Lake’s 1990s pirate radio station)
- Mabel Normand (Pioneering female filmmaker)
- Manzanita Community Garden (the smallest community garden in Los Angeles)
- Oldest bars and restaurants
- The ON Club (Los Angeles’s Original Mod Revival club)
- The Philosophical Research Society
- Richard Neutra
- Silver Lake’s historic “high” rises
- Silver Lake’s Mid-Century Modern architectural legacy
- Silver Lake’s old tract names (Childs Heights, Edendale, Ivanhoe, Primrose Hill, &c)
- Silverlake Garden Apartments
- The Silver Lake reservoir fence
- Silver Lake Stonehenge (the Red Car trestle footings)
- Silvertop (The Reiner-Burchill Residence)
- The Sunset Junction Street Fair
- Tokio Florist
- Underground walkways that have been filled in
- What’s going on with the Tang’s Donuts space?
- Who is Esther from Esther’s Steps?
- Who was Tom LaBonge?
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Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”
Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hey Freelancer!, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft Contemporary, Form Follows Function, the Los Angeles County Store, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles, Skid Row Housing Trust, the 1650 Gallery, and Abundant Housing LA.
Brightwell has been featured as subject and/or guest in The Los Angeles Times, VICE, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, CurbedLA, Office Hours Live, L.A. Untangled, Spectrum News, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, Notebook on Cities and Culture, the Silver Lake History Collective, KCRW‘s Which Way, LA?, All Valley Everything, Hear in LA, KPCC‘s How to LA, at Emerson College, and at the University of Southern California.
Brightwell is currently writing a book about Los Angeles.
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