The other day Patrick and I were driving in an area of the Valley we don’t often find ourselves in, and we stumbled upon the most bizarre Victorian monstrosity. A quick turn around and we stood beneath a towering building simply dubbed The Victorian.

My brain was boggled, because while elements certainly seemed genuine from the turn of the century, its size and shape just seemed too weird to be real. That’s when I learned it is nothing short of Frankenstein’s Monster but in architecture form. The story of the Victorian begins in 1839 in France of all places. That is when the Catholic organization Little Sisters of the Poor was created to serve the “elderly poor.” Eventually Little Sisters expanded across the globe, arriving in Los Angeles in 1905. They built a massive home that welcomed the less fortunate in 1908 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. In the meantime, LA’s wealthy were building grand Victorian homes on Bunker Hill, overlooking the growing city. But by the 1930s, the rich moved out of LA, Pacific Electric’s “Red Cars” were bustling up and down the streets, and eventually the freeway arrived. The once elegant Victorian homes turned into slum apartments, and by the late 1950s they were labeled as “blight” and were demolished, leading to the construction of office focused skyscrapers. Back at the Little Sisters home, it too was showing its age, and in 1976 (or 1979, sources vary) they too up and left LA, for nearby San Pedro.

Amidst the destruction of the 1960s and 70s was Dennis Platt, a carpenter and owner of Platt Construction, who salvaged elements from Bunker Hill and the Little Sisters Boyle Heights location. In 1981 he teamed up with architect T.W. Layman and they Frankenstein’ed the ornate reclaimed Victorian elements together to create the Platt Office Building, also known as The Victorian. It’s hard to figure out what pieces came from where, especially since the the Little Sisters building was brick, and there were a fair number of Bunker Hill homes.

Sadly, the Victorian is closed to the public, and you have to have a reason to enter, aside from just wanting to explore and bask in the ingenuity of this architectural marvel. At nearly 34,000 square feet it is home to an exterminator, insurance office, a dentist, and an appointment-only bridal salon.

Platt Construction seemed to have an affinity for the whimsical, as seen on their now criminally underused Instagram page, where you can find photos of other commercial buildings that brought delightful charm to a landscape that was sadly turning away from detail in favor of black glass and Post-Modern minimalism.

Gaze up at the massive Victorian at 19715 Sherman Way in Winnetka.

What’s Nearby?

Corriganville

The Munch Box

Valley Relics Museum

Sources
“A message from the Little Sisters of the Poor.” Little Sisters of the Poor.
“Local Gems: The Valley.” CICLAVIA, 20 November 2024.
Nichols, Chris. “There’s a Victorian building in Canoga Park that I heard was made from pieces of Bunker Hill mansions. What’s the story?” Los Angeles Magazine, 1 April 2012.