Re “Demolition proceeds despite City Councilman efforts,” Oct. 31 issue

I have lived across the street and loved this house for 14 years. There was never a demolition notice placed in the dining room window of this house. Not for one day. We would have acted immediately to save it if there had been.

We learned a few days prior to demolishing the house that [it] was Gradons’ intention. With our quick actions, we were able to get [Councilman Paul] Koretz to put in an emergency application for historical status of the house on the Tuesday before the Wednesday demolition.

On Wednesday morning, we noticed activity and began rallying around the house. By 9 a.m., a bulldozer showed up. We stood in front of the bulldozer to prohibit it from entering the property. Workers went around us with axes and began hacking out the leaded glass windows and hand carved beams, defacing the exterior. Within a few minutes, they had defaced the entire exterior. At that point, we knew the house was destroyed and that we had lost the fight.

Through lies, deception, cheating and breaking the law, Reuven and Shevy Gradon got what they wanted. We kept being told that morning by one of Gradon’s minions that they “are going to build something much more beautiful.” This house not only represented our city’s history, but provided a sense of strength, permanency, beauty and comfort for the neighborhood. In our minds, there is nothing more beautiful than that. In 15 minutes, with an ambush of a few axes and a bulldozer, that was all destroyed.

Johnson Hartig

Los Angeles

I’ve decided to post [a comment] as an immediate and effective form of anger management at [Reuven and Shevy Gradon’s] duplicitous and deliberately misleading behavior.

They fraudulently expressed their excitement at being able to call their new acquisition “home,” implying an intention to tend to and care for the lovingly maintained property passed on to them. Their greed and mendacity, not to mention the curious late timing of the demolition notice, have demonstrated their lack of character, a value system that places ethics well below personal gratification and a sheer disregard for acting in good faith and in a trustworthy manner.

When/if they move into their newly gutted and reconfigured house, I dearly hope the people in the immediate vicinity deny them the courtesy one ordinarily shows to neighbors, since they deserve nothing but incivility and cold shoulders.

Jeffrey Rockwell

Los Angeles

When the City Council wanted to impose an emergency moratorium on evictions, they were able to get that done in record-setting time. Stopping this demolition, however, clearly didn’t excite them nearly as much.

I live in Carthay Circle, which has been an HPOZ since 1998 and where demolitions are not allowed for any conforming home. However, our historically “protected” neighborhood, and many other HPOZs around here, are about to be trampled over by Metro’s Crenshaw Northern Rail Extension Project. So, while it’s illegal for homeowners to tear down, or often even construct period-appropriate additions, the city seems to have no problem with destroying HPOZs entirely to lay their tracks and upzone giant swaths of the city. I suspect if that happens, a lot more builders and developers (and homeowners) like this article’s example will ignore the demolition rules as well. If the city can ignore the laws so can others, right?

Alex Worman

Carthay Circle