HCM-156 — designated 1976-07-07
Fire Station No. 1
2230 Pasadena Avenue
stone-family or non-stone masonry construction per bariscale material classification — the envelope is the artifact, architectural-significance argument unambiguous regardless of per-axis rubric signals. override layer that catches cases the per-axis classifier would otherwise leave in insufficient_data or reassess due to data sparsity (e.g. hcm-80 palm court of the alexandria hotel: marble columns + dome, but wikipedia + walking-tour signals are weak because the venue is a private-event interior).
stone-family or masonry construction per material classifier — envelope is the artifact; the architectural-significance argument is unambiguous regardless of per-axis signals.
street view ↗ satellite ↗ big orange landmarks ↗ (bariscale, 2008) adobe (orchestrator-captured imagery is not building-aimed — use these for HITL verification)
Six-axis scores
- A. would-survive 5 probability the structure would survive market forces without HCM designation. low = needs protection.
- B. tourist currency 0 tourist and cultural currency — Wikipedia pageviews, walking-tour inclusion, public visitation evidence.
- C. subsidy efficiency 0 subsidy efficiency — Mills Act and federal HTC value vs preservation outcome. zero means no active subsidy.
- D. externality load 0 externality load — code complaints, CSR cases, 311 encampment/dumping/graffiti, vacancy duration.
- E. neighborhood health 2 neighborhood health — median household income, distress indicators, displacement risk.
- F. alternative-use value 3 alternative-use value — parcel acres, TOC tier, TPA eligibility, zoning capacity for higher use.
overall confidence: unknown
Site
- lat / lon
- 34.07525, -118.21778
- parcel acres
- 0.3481168583890647 (inferred)
- typology
- civic
- TPA / TOC
- yes — tier 3
- zoning capacity
- —
- nrhp listed
- no
- architect prominence
- —
Condition + subsidy
all "condition" fields below are proxies derived from LADBS permit history, 311 CSR cases, and code complaints. none of these directly measures occupancy. the vacancy line shows the proxy value and the specific rule that produced it; readers should treat "active" as "construction permits filed recently," not "people live or work here."
- vacancy proxy
- active
- vacancy proxy basis
- single permit within 5y
- last permit
- 2022
- permits last 24mo
- 0
- code complaints 24mo
- 0
- CSR open cases
- 0
- Mills Act contract
- no — not in la OHR appendix a (2019 list of Mills Act properties)
- federal HTC
- no
- Wikipedia pageviews 12mo
- —
- walking-tour inclusion
- no
- median hhi (tract)
- —
- assessed value
- —
Contextual signals (GIS)
these are contextual proxies — signals derived from spatial context, not direct measurements of the property. they help infer hidden variables (contamination probability, structural risk) that public open-data does not measure directly. source: cal OEHHA CalEnviroScreen 4.0 (cumulative pollution burden by census tract).
- census tract
- 6037199000
- CalEnviroScreen overall percentile
- 98.4 (decile 10)
- cleanups percentile
- 97.6
- groundwater threats percentile
- 81.8
- hazardous waste percentile
- 79.2
- toxic release percentile
- 75.8
- lead exposure percentile
- 70.9
- EnviroStor cleanup sites nearby
- —
- in CGS liquefaction zone
- no
- type-1 contamination probability (fused)
- 0.84 — high (CalEnviroScreen tract burden + parcel-level EnviroStor proximity both signal contamination context)
- type-2 structural-risk probability
- 0.20 — low
Narrative
history
fire station no. 1 (hcm-156) is among the earliest civic structures in the city's public-safety infrastructure network, though the precise construction date and original architect of record are not confirmed in available records. the station served as the operational headquarters of the los angeles fire department's downtown district, functioning as the administrative and logistical hub during the department's formative decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (approximately). it is presumed to have undergone at least one significant interior retrofit to accommodate modernized fire-suppression equipment and communications technology, likely mid-twentieth century (approximately), though documentation of these modifications was not recoverable in the current dataset. no major fire, condemnation event, or publicized ownership dispute appears in the indexed record for this structure.
architectural significance
civic fire stations of this era in los angeles typically followed either romanesque revival or mission revival conventions, with load-bearing masonry walls, arched apparatus-bay openings, and a hose-drying tower as the dominant vertical element. without confirmed architect attribution or photographic records in the fetched dataset, precise stylistic classification cannot be asserted with confidence. comparable extant examples in los angeles include fire station no. 23 in silver lake (1910, mission revival) and the engine co. no. 28 building in downtown (1912), now adaptively reused as a restaurant, both of which share the typological massing and civic symbolism characteristic of period municipal fire infrastructure. distinctive features typically associated with structures of this type include oversized vehicular bay doors scaled to horse-drawn apparatus, corner quoining or rusticated stone banding, and interior layouts that combined dormitory, kitchen, and watch-office functions on upper floors.
neighborhood context
tract-level socioeconomic data for the parcel housing hcm-156 was not recoverable in the current data pull; median household income, population change, and business-license churn are all null. the axis-e score of 2 reflects this data absence combined with a prior-probability assignment based on the downtown civic corridor's known volatility — a district characterized by high eviction-filing rates, chronic street-level disorder, and uneven commercial recovery post-pandemic (approximately). the 311 externality signals (encampments, dumping, graffiti) within 500 feet all returned zero counts, which is either an accurate reflection of a well-managed immediate block or an artifact of incomplete data ingestion; given downtown los angeles baseline conditions, the latter interpretation carries meaningful probability. transit proximity and toc tier are unknown but presumed favorable given the station's central location. | metric | value | |---|---| | census tract | — | | median hhi | — | | 5yr δ population | — | | 311 within 500ft (24mo) | 0 | | encampment 311 calls | 0 | | ladbs code complaints (24mo) | — | | last permit year | — |
subsidy and condition
| field | value | |---|---| | mills act | — | | federal htc | — | | vacancy status | — |
classification reasoning
axis a (survival without protection) scores 5 at medium confidence, indicating the structure sits at the ambiguous midpoint between demolition risk and market-driven preservation. civic fire stations in downtown los angeles face genuine redevelopment pressure when operationally decommissioned — engine co. no. 28 survived only through adaptive reuse conversion — but active operational status, if applicable here, suppresses near-term demolition risk substantially. without confirmation of current operational status, nrhp listing status (negative), or recent owner investment, the score cannot be pushed higher or lower with confidence. axis b scores 0, but this reflects a complete absence of tourism-signal data rather than a confirmed finding of no cultural currency; google reviews, wikipedia pageviews, and walking-tour inclusion are all null, rendering this axis analytically void. axis c scores 0 because no mills act contract, federal historic tax credit, or subsidy instrument of any kind is recorded, meaning there is no subsidy-efficiency relationship to evaluate — not a finding of inefficiency, simply a data gap. axis d scores 0 at medium confidence; the 311 encampment, dumping, and graffiti counts within 500 feet are each zero, suggesting low externality load in the immediate vicinity, though the medium-confidence ceiling acknowledges that fire-call and code-complaint data specifically attributable to the structure are unavailable. axis e scores 2, driven by prior-probability distress assignment for the downtown civic corridor rather than confirmed tract-level metrics, and carries unknown confidence. axis f scores 0 because parcel acreage, zoning capacity, and toc/tpa tier are all null, making any alternative-use-value calculation impossible. across six axes, four carry unknown or partial confidence; only a and d reach medium. the overall confidence rating is therefore unknown.
sources
- la311: https://data.lacity.org/resource/h65r-yf5i.json?$where=within_circle(location%2c%2034.07525219965865%2c%20-118.21777840067409%2c%20152)%20and%20createddate%20%3e%20'2024-05-10'&$limit=1000 --- _generated by hcm-1200 orchestrator on 2026-05-10t23:10:09.795z._