Eva Story plays with her dog in front of her century-old Janes Village cottage, which survived the Eaton Fire. Neighbors estimate that dozens of similar historic cottages burned down and they're working together to rebuild their unique community. (Photo by William Jenkins / AfroLA)
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Joanne McLaughlin adored her storybook cottage in Altadena. The old home was full of character, with barrel-coved ceilings, archways between the rooms and a roof that pitched steeply to frame the front door.
“ I really loved how you could open our front door and walk straight through the living room, through the sliding doors to our backyard,” she says.
She and her husband Joseph hosted dozens of neighborhood parties over the 24 years they lived on West Terrace Street. When her home burned down in the Eaton Fire, she’d been planning a block party to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her home and at least 180 similar Tudor Revival-style homes in West Altadena.
“The fire took that all away from us,” she says.
The blocks with the highest concentration of these small footprint cottages are collectively known as Janes Village – named after the eccentric developer who built them, E.P Janes. It became an Altadena Heritage Area in 2002. Neighbors estimate that up to 75% of Janes-built cottages burned in the wildfire.
These model cottages sold for $500 down – sometimes fully furnished – in the early 1920s and expanded first-time homeownership, says Michele Zack, a local historian and author of Altadena: Between Wilderness and City. A century later, McLaughlin and many others now rebuilding these homes were also first-time homeowners when they purchased their Janes cottages decades ago.
Now, neighbors of this architecturally-unique area are leaning on each other to recreate the historical charm and community that drew them to the neighborhood.
“People keep saying, ‘Let’s combine our resources and buy everything together,’” says Zack, who also lost her historic home of 40 years, of a different style, in the fire. “It’s really hard to do if everyone has a different house, but the fact that they are architecturally if not identical, they have the same elements. It makes it possible to do that.”
Meet the Altadena Collective
Janes Village is the kind of neighborhood where most people know each other. They sit on front porches to chat and host carrot cake bake-offs.
“ We all have this thing. We all chose a tiny footprint home that was very cute and cozy to live in,” says Tim Vordtriede, a design professional and project manager.
Before the fire, Vordtriede had been planning to renovate his Janes cottage and add an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, so he had a 3D model and architectural drawings of the home. After discovering that his home had burned down, he dove into work mode. He’d previously helped design homes for clients recovering from wildfires in Malibu. Now, he’s designing homes for his own community.
Vordtriede quickly realized many of his neighbors had no idea where to begin. That inspired him and fellow designers Chris Driscoll and Chris Corbett to put together the Altadena Collective – a physical office in Pasadena where people can get their rebuilding questions answered. It’s also a design hub that aims to leverage collective power to help locals keep the character of Altadena alive at an affordable price.
“ There are options for rebuilding,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be tract or high-price custom. There’s a lot of middle ground there.”
Rebuilding a custom home is the most expensive option, and many people may not be able to afford to do that depending on their insurance. Vordtriede did a deep dive to understand what elements make up the Janes cottages – certain windows, roof styles and layouts.
From there, he pooled those elements into various design options that fit within an average square footage and account for modern upgrades and fire hardening measures. Six Janes Village cottage designs donated to the The Foothills Catalog Foundation are preapproved by L.A. County, which cuts down on the permitting timeline.
“ If they recognize bits of this in the home they lost, we can help them recreate it,” he says.
The Altadena Collective is also creating a book of trusted contractors that homeowners could decide to work with to implement the designs.
Read the full story at AfroLA.
This post was originally published on Next City.