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| Koffee Pot Cafe Long Beach, California lbpost.com |
Hello Everyone:
Let yours truly start with an apology about not posting yesterday. Unfortunately, Blogger had to deal with an incredibly rude person who soured Blogger's session. Yours truly has a multi-part Presidential Election post planned for the coming weeks. It should be an exciting series. Now onto today's subject: architectural remains found in the roof of a cafe.
Blogger would like to thank Sara Delgadillo Cruz for sending the article "Remain of Victorian-Style Home Found in Roof of Koffee Pot Cafe," by Jason Ruiz, for the Long Beach Post. The story is from two years ago but it is a nice story about a cafe that was once designated for demolition, then save by the discovery of a Victorian-style house in the roof. Blogger was quite surprised by this and thought it would be a great story.
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| The Hot Cha/Koffee Pot Cafe c.1980 Photograph courtesy of California Crazy Jim Heimann and Rip Georges Long Beach, California la.curbed.com |
The Koffee Pot, also known as the Hot-Cha Cafe, is one of the last remaining examples of programmatic architecture. Work on the rehabilitation project began in the Summer of 2015, when the WATN team shepherded the current owners, Long Beach Development LLC through the City of Long Beach Cultural Heritage Commission application process. Once approval was secured, the owners began work on the exterior, restoring it to its former caffeinated glory. (Ibid) The project has been extremely challenging but worthwhile and yielded plenty of surprises.
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| Full view of Victorian-era house inside the cafe wearethenext.org |
The remains of the house were unearthed by organization and their partners Salvage Division and Pro Enterprises. Jason Ruiz writes, "The foundation of the building located at 951 East Fourth Street seems to have been built on the skeleton of an old home, meaning the Koffee Pot's-originally known as Hot Cha-may date back to the early 1900s or earlier according to We Are The Next Executive Director Kate Rispoli."
In a statement released by WATN, Ms. Rispoli said,
We are all baffled by this incredible find...Reintroducing this unique artifact as a fixture in the building moving forward will provide a sense of place and history and will return a lost gem to Long Beach.
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| Rainbow colored shingles wearethenext.org |
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| The underside of the roof gable wearethenext.org |
The preservation team believes that the rainbow-colored shingles were originally exposed in the cafe "...because the roof rafters that now support the coffee spout were painted to match the home's rainbow layout, which would've only been visible to patrons on the inside." The spout was added in 1932 but the house's address, located on part of the site, dates back to the twenties. The statement goes onto say,
Builders of the Hot Cha Café most likely used the frame o the existing residence as the frame for the restaurant to save costs during the Great Depression...The reason for retaining the upper portion of the home's primary façade is unknown.
The false ceiling that kept the rainbow shingles hidden from view is believed to have been installed after 1932. The Long Beach Development LLC is planning to work with future tenants of the building to remove the false ceiling and once again expose the turn of the twentieth century architecture. The cafe has been home to a variety of businesses since being vacated in 2010, the most recent business was a medical marijuana dispensary. During the eighties, it was a barbershop, and before that a coffee emporium. One potential future inhabitant could include the resurrection of the Koffee Pot, one cup at a time.
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