Coming to Tehrangeles
March 13, 2017 3:59 AM Subscribe
Back then, I didn’t like Persian Palaces much. From what I knew, rich Persians built those swanky homes in Beverly Hills, spending a pretty penny—those columns were said to go for four figures a pop in their heyday. Maybe those Persians longed for centuries-old kingdoms, but the Iran my parents were nostalgic for wasn’t the one of the ancient era, but of the recent past, colored by memories of road trips to the Caspian Sea and the comforts of being raised in large families and always having them close, before the Islamic Revolution and an eight-year war with Iraq scattered the living generations of Iranians all over the world.
Now, I wonder if Persian Palaces should have meant a little more to me then, and to Los Angeles, before they went out of vogue.
Learning to love the ‘Persian Palaces’ of Beverly Hills – What these boxy mansions taught me about being Iranian-American
Learning to love the ‘Persian Palaces’ of Beverly Hills – What these boxy mansions taught me about being Iranian-American
It's kind of frustrating to have an article discussing a particular architectural style with not a single visual example thereof. (A quick GIS for "Persian Palace" showed a bunch of fantasy art and one of the Taj Mahal.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:41 AM on March 13, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:41 AM on March 13, 2017 [11 favorites]
Googling "Persian palace Beverly Hills" will so the trick.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:49 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Room 641-A at 4:49 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
The NY equivalent is Bukharian mansions in Queens and you get the same coded racist/xenophobic language couched as "ooooh but we're just trying to preserve the HERITAGE and STYLE of old New York before it vanishes! The city must never, ever change!" or snotty "Eeew, bad taste in architecture!" There's even been repeated arsons of those houses... Amazes me that in the supposed land of the free you can't even build your own house the way you want.
posted by pravit at 5:44 AM on March 13, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by pravit at 5:44 AM on March 13, 2017 [6 favorites]
TThis was really interesting. There's a a lot of good writing coming from Curbed lately.
In Jr High we moved to the West LA area, where I made friends with lots of Persians. None lived in a "palace" but everyone's homes felt opulent, whether they were luxury condos on Wilshire or modest apartments. I've always assumed these "palaces" were the original influence for the McMansions that started coming up soon after; it's not uncommon to see low-budget remodels on small homes in the area boasting the columns and other trademarks of the style. You can argue about the aesthetics, but in my experience, once you step over that threshold you are like family and treated as lavishly as the homes are decorated.
But I'm surprised "Sheikh"* Mohammed Al-Fassi's Sunset Blvd mansion wasn't mentioned because that was really the first backlash I can recall against this style of house (and the people building them.) Unlike homes that were hidden in the hills or behind gates, this home was on prominent display on one of the major East-West thoroughfares in Los Angeles. At some point he painted the mansion lime green, added a copper roof, planted plastic flowers, and oh yeah, he painted the many classical nude statues in lifelike flesh tones and painted the pubes red. It was not popular. Incredibly, I can't seem to find any photos of the place**, although it is mentioned in all his obituaries. Here is a first-person account of the night it burned down.
*Apparently not a real sheikh at all
**You can see what the interior looks like in The Jerk. The mansion's interiors were used for shooting Navin's mansion. Which is pretty awesome.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:59 AM on March 13, 2017 [5 favorites]
In Jr High we moved to the West LA area, where I made friends with lots of Persians. None lived in a "palace" but everyone's homes felt opulent, whether they were luxury condos on Wilshire or modest apartments. I've always assumed these "palaces" were the original influence for the McMansions that started coming up soon after; it's not uncommon to see low-budget remodels on small homes in the area boasting the columns and other trademarks of the style. You can argue about the aesthetics, but in my experience, once you step over that threshold you are like family and treated as lavishly as the homes are decorated.
But I'm surprised "Sheikh"* Mohammed Al-Fassi's Sunset Blvd mansion wasn't mentioned because that was really the first backlash I can recall against this style of house (and the people building them.) Unlike homes that were hidden in the hills or behind gates, this home was on prominent display on one of the major East-West thoroughfares in Los Angeles. At some point he painted the mansion lime green, added a copper roof, planted plastic flowers, and oh yeah, he painted the many classical nude statues in lifelike flesh tones and painted the pubes red. It was not popular. Incredibly, I can't seem to find any photos of the place**, although it is mentioned in all his obituaries. Here is a first-person account of the night it burned down.
*Apparently not a real sheikh at all
**You can see what the interior looks like in The Jerk. The mansion's interiors were used for shooting Navin's mansion. Which is pretty awesome.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:59 AM on March 13, 2017 [5 favorites]
obligatory dril
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:15 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:15 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
The NY equivalent is Bukharian mansions in Queens and you get the same coded racist/xenophobic language couched as "ooooh but we're just trying to preserve the HERITAGE and STYLE of old New York before it vanishes! The city must never, ever change!" or snotty "Eeew, bad taste in architecture!"
I found this article which is pretty much exactly as you describe. The article decries "tacky chromed-out fences and shiny metal gates", while showing examples that feature neither. They're not exactly pretty--pretty grim, rather--but "New York's worst architecture"? Ha ha, not even close.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:27 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
I found this article which is pretty much exactly as you describe. The article decries "tacky chromed-out fences and shiny metal gates", while showing examples that feature neither. They're not exactly pretty--pretty grim, rather--but "New York's worst architecture"? Ha ha, not even close.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:27 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Bhukarin mansions emulate some aspects of old world stately city home construction (monumental, built to the lot line) but omit a key feature (enclosed courtyards) and add a lamentable new world feature (multi-car garages). The ones plopped down in the Cord-Meyer section or just west of Forest Hills Garden are pretty badly out of step with a unified aesthetic but most elsewhere in Queens there ain't no aesthetic to be united with.
posted by MattD at 7:20 AM on March 13, 2017
posted by MattD at 7:20 AM on March 13, 2017
Houses like this are not even a big city or Persian issue. I had one in the blue collar neighborhood I used to live in. Complete raze and rebuild maxxed out to the largest size allowed by zoning. You get a big boxy pile that looms over the block.
posted by Badgermann at 7:35 AM on March 13, 2017
posted by Badgermann at 7:35 AM on March 13, 2017
But I'm surprised "Sheikh"* Mohammed Al-Fassi's Sunset Blvd mansion wasn't mentioned because that was really the first backlash I can recall against this style of house
Maybe because he was Arab?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:52 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
Maybe because he was Arab?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:52 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
I don't think people made the distinction. But yes, that's a different angle then the personal experience and I shouldn't have conflated the two.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:07 AM on March 13, 2017
posted by Room 641-A at 8:07 AM on March 13, 2017
Eh, not my taste, but no worse than those boxy ultra-modern things people replacing old small houses with in trendy old neighbourhoods around here -- they fill the lot completely, have flat roofs, and are all glass, corten steel, stone, and other weird mixed finishes. They all look the same to me, but are the darlings of architects and keep winning design awards.
Definitely annoying that the article doesn't have pictures.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:51 AM on March 13, 2017
Definitely annoying that the article doesn't have pictures.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:51 AM on March 13, 2017
I'm always starving for articles like these, because despite the size of the diaspora in California, there are remarkably few pieces of writing by Iranian-Americans about the clash of cultures- both the ignorance from without and also the judgment from within- I was always admonished for being "too Americanized" at home while also being subject to the typical microaggressions (and occasionally, regular aggression) in public.
One thing this article doesn't touch on is the divergence of Iranian-American diaspora culture and contemporary Iranian culture. My mother, who for decades after moving to the USA insisted that only Iran would ever be home for her, recently returned from a visit declaring that even her own family were like strangers to her, that she didn't recognize anything, that she was now a foreigner everywhere. I can relate in a sense, as I was raised with an urgent attention to a 'persianness' that seemed less relevant every year, and which led to minor identity crises as I moved away from Iranian communities and realized that other than food and language, there is basically nothing particularly Iranian about me.
And despite knowing that this inner question of what it 'means' to be Iranian-American exists in every one of us, there are no thinkpieces discussing the big issues, like what race we're even supposed to identify as (my parent's generation overwhelmingly identifies as white, while my generation increasingly as POC); what is lost when as we rapidly integrate (among my cousins 100% of us married out of the culture); why there is so much antagonism towards other Middle Eastern people (like many immigrants, many Iranian-Americans want to slam the door shut behind them); the list goes on, and the questions remain unanswered, and my young multiracial nieces and nephews and cousins-once-removed view Persianness as an abstraction or simply quirks of their extended families, one more ethnicity to add to their many-hyphenated backgrounds.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:56 AM on March 13, 2017 [17 favorites]
One thing this article doesn't touch on is the divergence of Iranian-American diaspora culture and contemporary Iranian culture. My mother, who for decades after moving to the USA insisted that only Iran would ever be home for her, recently returned from a visit declaring that even her own family were like strangers to her, that she didn't recognize anything, that she was now a foreigner everywhere. I can relate in a sense, as I was raised with an urgent attention to a 'persianness' that seemed less relevant every year, and which led to minor identity crises as I moved away from Iranian communities and realized that other than food and language, there is basically nothing particularly Iranian about me.
And despite knowing that this inner question of what it 'means' to be Iranian-American exists in every one of us, there are no thinkpieces discussing the big issues, like what race we're even supposed to identify as (my parent's generation overwhelmingly identifies as white, while my generation increasingly as POC); what is lost when as we rapidly integrate (among my cousins 100% of us married out of the culture); why there is so much antagonism towards other Middle Eastern people (like many immigrants, many Iranian-Americans want to slam the door shut behind them); the list goes on, and the questions remain unanswered, and my young multiracial nieces and nephews and cousins-once-removed view Persianness as an abstraction or simply quirks of their extended families, one more ethnicity to add to their many-hyphenated backgrounds.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:56 AM on March 13, 2017 [17 favorites]
I really love this, not only as a piece about architecture, but as lovely piece from a second-gen immigrant writing. Most of my reading in that genre has been from a Chinese-American context, and so much of that is weighted down by questions of identity and assimilation and reconciling Chinese cultural practices with American mores. So it was refreshing to see the straight-up pride and pleasure in this piece -- the unapologetic and specific references to conducting interviews in Farsi, for example, or the way she gives you a little flavor of Farsi itself with turns of phrase like straighten the spine of anyone of Iranian heritage or may you not be tired.
This is wonderful and wonderfully written and really made my morning.
(Side note: the author's at the person using the word "Persian" as term of denigration while eating saffron and pistachio ice cream was one of the most effective sniper hits I've ever seen in a piece like this. Apply to burn, etc.)
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:59 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is wonderful and wonderfully written and really made my morning.
(Side note: the author's at the person using the word "Persian" as term of denigration while eating saffron and pistachio ice cream was one of the most effective sniper hits I've ever seen in a piece like this. Apply to burn, etc.)
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:59 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
This article is a bit frustrating because it conflates a bunch of things — Beverly Hills with Los Angeles, Floor Area Ratios and setbacks with anti-Persian sentiment, nouveau riche with Persian aesthetics — mainly to prop up a nostalgia flight about growing up Persian-American in the OC.
I might be extra attuned to this because the recent Measure S made me do a shit ton of research on zoning codes and Los Angeles development restrictions, but the editor of the piece should have given some pretty strong pushback.
Beverly Hills zoning had backlash against "Persian Palaces," but they're not banned in LA — in the last five years, I've had four of them go up in about a five block radius from me. (While in my neighborhood, they may ethnically be Armenian Palaces, the design aesthetic is the same.) That includes columns and stone lions. Another appears to be in construction a couple blocks from here. I don't doubt that racism is behind at least some of their being singled out as specifically tacky and ostentatious, simply because there are a ton of other tacky and ostentatious buildings around here (or in Beverly Hills), and this town has been dominated by tacky and ostentatious design from the start. That doesn't mean that they're not often out-of-scale with the rest of the neighborhood, or that they're not boxy turds — a new one a couple blocks from here looks like a brutalist block in '90s browns with gilt accents, with zero setback and a couple of beige columns sunk into the facade. It looks far worse than some of the modernist cubes we have in the neighborhood — a couple of which are historic buildings now. The modernist pieces actually blend well with the Craftsman and bungalow homes next to them, even as they have a bigger FAR, and use proportion skillfully to give good lines from multiple angles.
I'd contrast that with the two palaces nearest to me, both on hills so they do a good job of sinking in to use the space, both white (one with gold accents, the other with blue), one of them clearly a compound for a big family (huge courtyard in the front, multiple wings of the house behind several balustrades) the other formerly a single-family home now converted into a duplex. While they're both tackier than I'd design (not a huge fan of plaster lions), they don't have to be hideous. The ones that are tend to be for the same reason that McMansions are hideous: Mismatched proportions, lack of balanced weighting, a mix of cheap-looking finishes (ugh, those earth tones) and garish accents.
Anyway, the 2007 changes to FAR and other popular planning pushes have little to do with palaces, Persian or otherwise, and more to do with the (generally racist and dumb) fight against denser housing, especially multi-family homes. I mean, Beverly Hills fought against getting the subway because they thought that criminals would use it to ride in and out for burglaries (absurd to anyone who's had a backpack on a train, let alone tried to cart off a TV). The recent Measure S fight was about largely the same thing — everyone agrees that we need more housing and less sprawl, but they don't want infill near them, so…
posted by klangklangston at 11:25 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
I might be extra attuned to this because the recent Measure S made me do a shit ton of research on zoning codes and Los Angeles development restrictions, but the editor of the piece should have given some pretty strong pushback.
Beverly Hills zoning had backlash against "Persian Palaces," but they're not banned in LA — in the last five years, I've had four of them go up in about a five block radius from me. (While in my neighborhood, they may ethnically be Armenian Palaces, the design aesthetic is the same.) That includes columns and stone lions. Another appears to be in construction a couple blocks from here. I don't doubt that racism is behind at least some of their being singled out as specifically tacky and ostentatious, simply because there are a ton of other tacky and ostentatious buildings around here (or in Beverly Hills), and this town has been dominated by tacky and ostentatious design from the start. That doesn't mean that they're not often out-of-scale with the rest of the neighborhood, or that they're not boxy turds — a new one a couple blocks from here looks like a brutalist block in '90s browns with gilt accents, with zero setback and a couple of beige columns sunk into the facade. It looks far worse than some of the modernist cubes we have in the neighborhood — a couple of which are historic buildings now. The modernist pieces actually blend well with the Craftsman and bungalow homes next to them, even as they have a bigger FAR, and use proportion skillfully to give good lines from multiple angles.
I'd contrast that with the two palaces nearest to me, both on hills so they do a good job of sinking in to use the space, both white (one with gold accents, the other with blue), one of them clearly a compound for a big family (huge courtyard in the front, multiple wings of the house behind several balustrades) the other formerly a single-family home now converted into a duplex. While they're both tackier than I'd design (not a huge fan of plaster lions), they don't have to be hideous. The ones that are tend to be for the same reason that McMansions are hideous: Mismatched proportions, lack of balanced weighting, a mix of cheap-looking finishes (ugh, those earth tones) and garish accents.
Anyway, the 2007 changes to FAR and other popular planning pushes have little to do with palaces, Persian or otherwise, and more to do with the (generally racist and dumb) fight against denser housing, especially multi-family homes. I mean, Beverly Hills fought against getting the subway because they thought that criminals would use it to ride in and out for burglaries (absurd to anyone who's had a backpack on a train, let alone tried to cart off a TV). The recent Measure S fight was about largely the same thing — everyone agrees that we need more housing and less sprawl, but they don't want infill near them, so…
posted by klangklangston at 11:25 AM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
There's a house I walk by every day in Chicago that I thought was just somewhat different than all the other houses around it, but it ticks off so many of the details described in that article (extra tall, ornamental fencing, lion statues, etc.) that I now wonder if there's something more to it. But it's really not anything like a palace.
posted by lagomorphius at 11:46 AM on March 13, 2017
posted by lagomorphius at 11:46 AM on March 13, 2017
Thanks for posting this piece. I loved the bit: "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a mesmerizing star of the Showtime era who had a name like he might be related to me"
posted by exogenous at 3:36 PM on March 13, 2017
posted by exogenous at 3:36 PM on March 13, 2017
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Lovely find!
posted by infini at 4:34 AM on March 13, 2017