The Mason team, covered in dust and sweat, worked hours at the ruins of the Altadena home as screams echoed through the wreckage.
Volunteer Devon Douglas emerged from a hole in a tiled rub that was once a living room and became astounding under the weight of a concrete slab of more than a foot.
“It’s the stairs,” Douglas recalls towards homeowner Valerie Ellachi. “The whole stairs and all the tiles.”
It was a bittersweet moment for 76-year-old Erachi, dancing down the tiled stairs when she and her husband first saw the house at an open house in the early 1980s.
She saw five volunteers carved historic tiles from the stairs and the fireplace in her huge living room from the walls of the patio. She thought having something to rescue was a gift, and she recalled fiercely of everything they had lost.
Cliff Douglas uses chisels to gently remove historic bachelor tiles from the fireplace of the 1923 Altadena home built by renowned local architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Gray.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
Work at Elachi’s home was carried out by a ragtag group of volunteers calling their collective Save the Tiles. The group competes to remove and preserve thousands of vintage, historically important tiles from the Eton Fireburn Zone before the property was bulldozed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As part of their work to remove debris and levellots for reconstruction, the Army Corps tears everything standing on the property. That includes chimneys and fireplaces. These can be structurally weakened by fire.
“Whatever you haven’t deleted has disappeared forever,” said Eric Garland, one of the organizers of Save the Tile.
Volunteers have stored tiles from around 50 homes, leaving around 150 left on the list. Already, they have received one close call, removing tiles from one house just two days before the Army Corps arrives.
Finding a well-skilled Mason was the group’s first challenge. Now their biggest hurdle is to get permission to track homeowners and remove tiles from their properties.
A team of volunteers uses public records to track homeowners, but they hit many dead ends. Property records typically do not contain contact information. Also, phone numbers often become outdated. In some cases, numbers ring on burnt-out landlines.
“At a moment, when we wake up and there’s no home in our queue, it’s right away,” Garland said.
Removed from Valerie Elachi’s fireplace, the bachelor tiles were washed and packed for long term storage before being placed in cardboard boxes.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
The group’s final effort to reach homeowners is a letter. Garland may be worth the shot as the email is still forwarded.
“Dear Neighbor,” the letter begins. “…We are just volunteers and we are eager to contact you as we want to rescue your historic fireplace tiles for free. That’s it. There are no strings.
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Garland embarked on a tile rescue mission after a walk around Altadena with her teenage daughter.
Their home survived the Eton fire, but many on their streets did not include their 1924 Spanish-style homes for their neighbor, Fred. In the tile rub, they found his century old fireplace. The grey, brown and beige tiles are still there.
“That beautiful fireplace is everything they left behind,” Garland’s daughter said.
Garland emailed her list serve from her neighborhood and asked if someone had saved the tiles. One response sent him to Douglas. Douglas wrote that Cliff, whose father, Cliff, is a professional mason, volunteers to remove tiles from the abandoned home for free.
The team joined forces. In early February, they gathered dozens of volunteers in the parking lot of Aldi grocery store in Altadena. Garland and fellow volunteer organizer Stanley Zucker handed out printed maps of the Burnzone, sent small groups out on foot, stuck on the sidewalk and told them to photograph the tiles that looked remote and historical.
In two days, volunteers completed ad hoc architecture surveys of thousands of burning facilities. They cut the list into over 200 homes with art and craft tiles by famous Pasadena craftsman Ernest Bachelder and one of his main competitors, Claycraft.
Produced on the banks of the Arroyoseco River in 1910, the Bachelder Tile was an important part of the California arts and craft movement, a style of return from nature, a response to the glamorous design of the Victorian era and the industrialization of American cities.
Most Bachelder tiles are located on private property, but also in the courtyard fountains of Pasadena Playhouse, the floor of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, and the lobby of the Downtown Los Angeles Museum of Art on 7th Avenue. (One of his biggest surviving committees, the 1914 Dutch Chocolate Shop in Downtown, is generally closed to the public.)
Early 20th century California was rich in clay and cultural influences, says Amy Green of Silver Lake Conservation, a company that repairs and restores historic tiles. In addition to the art and craft movement, tile artists have begun to produce a wide range of works inspired by traditional Mexican and indigenous designs and European styles like Delft.
Devon Douglas, daughter of a professional Mason Cliff Douglas, examines Mayan-style bachelor tiles that have just been removed from the fireplace.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
“It reflects who we are and what we are,” Green said. “A very interesting mix of people who bring a variety of aesthetics and skills to our work.”
The Bachelder tiles are matte finishes and underneath the glazes, and are below the palm size. In the company’s catalogue in 1923, Tile described it as “a brilliant, mellow character that was somewhat similar to the quality of the old tapestry.”
They could be ordered through the catalogue and were relatively affordable, said Anuja Navare, director of the collections at the Pasadena Museum, which maintains a private registration of the home with bacheldar tiles. Many middle-class families shifted a bit, installing them in new bungalows in the 1910s and 1920s.
“He made beauty available to those with modest measures,” Navare said.
The work of Bachelder and his competitors has spread to thousands of homes, businesses and civic institutions in Southern California.
American tastes changed, and by the end of World War II, many tile companies had borne them. Art and craft tiles were painted or torn in favor of 1970s avocado greens and burnt oranges.
However, tiles have returned to fashion over the past 20 years, developing a cult following among design enthusiasts. Actress Diane Keaton has renovated the entire house with historic tiles. Conservationists are known for dumpster diving to save bachelder tiles from landfills.
A single recovered tile can be sold for over $200. A fully intact furnace and mantle can fetch 100 times that.
Early on, Save the Tiles Group was on high alert for looters in the burn zone. Most people pass the ruins of the house without looking at the fireplace again, but the chosen one knows what to look for.
Cliff Douglas of Mason said he evaluated several fireplaces along one street and returned to find that the tiles were gone. He said it was impossible to know whether the tiles had been removed by the homeowner or by someone else.
The group was the first to tackle the most visible fireplaces, including those on the corners. One volunteer with a Hollywood set building experience has built a false front to disguise the fireplace, like other fire debris.
The tiles must be removed by trained Masons, and the preserved tiles have a crew of four people each day, consisting of volunteers and workers whose employers cover wages. The group plans to begin paying Masons from GoFundMe, which currently raises more than $100,000.
Cliff Douglas examines the historic fireplace covered in bachelder and groovey tiles.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
About 20 volunteers learned from the green how to properly clean, catalog and store tiles. Some cracked tiles still need to be professionally restored, which costs money, but much of the work can be done by amateurs, Garland said.
Some of them sit in boxes on the side porch of Garland’s mother’s house, while others are in a climate-controlled warehouse in Harbor City, donated by friends in the tile industry. The tiles wait until the homeowner is ready to retrieve them.
According to Green, the power of the project is that the furnace is extremely important at home. “It provides warmth,” she said. “That’s where you’re coming together.”
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Removing the tiles is a delicate task that you can’t hurry up with, despite the pressure of the bulldozer approaching.
Over a recent weekend, potter Jose Nonato was standing on a tile rub in a three-bedroom home along East Altadena Drive. His hair, forearms and apron were dust coated. Mexico City’s third generation potter appeared on his tools after seeing a Facebook post about rescue operations. He worked hours in the 30th wedding sun, extracting the tiles surrounding the fireplace.
The tiles had once been fired at a ki that reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit 100 years ago, Nonat said. He said Eton Fire had thrown them into a thermal shock. They can collapse at any time.
Nonato placed the noshell on the mortar and began tapping on the top of the tool with a hammer. He gently polished tiles the size of a paperback book and wiped his hands down the dusty surface. A faint shade of green shines – Bacheldar.
By the end of the day, Nonato had rescued about 90% of the tiles and placed them on driveway blankets in the same pattern as the fireplace. Some were broken and held together with red duct tape, but they are repaired. Soon, the tiles were cleaned, boxed and stored, and the homeowners were planning to rebuild.
“This is basically the only thing that remains,” Nonato said. “This and memories.”
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Altadena homeowner Elachi initially wanted tile volunteers to reinforce the huge bachelor’s fireplace in her living room.
From left, Cliff Douglas and his assistants Martin Vargas, Jorge Vargas and Roberto Murillo remove debris from the furnace of Altadena’s house.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
To her disappointment, Cliff Douglas told her that the mortar had been weakened in the fire. He said, or the Army Corps would defeat it on their own.
Erachi and her husband raised their daughter in a 1923 Pueblo Revival style home, cared for 40 years of property, embracing the Southwest style, finding furniture and art where pink Adobe walls and wooden beams above the windows looked at the Santa Fe home.
“This house was like another child to us,” Erachi said.
The fire took almost everything. Her husband’s memorabilia is the director of the Jet Propulsion Institute, their pottery and furniture, all of their photos and books. The loss was overwhelming and enraged. They want to rebuild, but it’s still unclear if they will.
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