The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday voted to designate the Westlake-area home of gay-rights pioneer Morris Kight as a city Historic Cultural Monument.
To the delight of community groups that had backed the proposal, the council voted unanimously for the designation. The home, at 1822 W. 4th St., already has designations from the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historical Resources as a historic resource.
Kight moved to Los Angeles from New Mexico in 1958, and was instrumental in founding multiple local gay-rights organizations, including the Christopher Street West gay pride parade, Aid For AIDS and the Gay Community Center (now the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center). He was also active in the labor and civil rights movements. He died in Los Angeles in January 2003 at the age of 83.
While the council’s vote Tuesday was unanimous, the matter’s path to passage was not a smooth ride.
Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, who represents the First District, in which the 1911 California bungalow home is located, previously called on her colleagues to delay the decision because “we were extremely concerned about the status of the property.” Additionally, she noted, the home had undergone “some significant alterations” since 1973, when Kight lived there.
“While the current owner of this property had offered to work with and sell the property to a number of organizations, including AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who put forward the nomination, none were wanting to take on the responsibility of rehabilitating this property or restoring it to its original state,” Hernandez said.
The site was originally proposed as a Historic Cultural Monument in October 2020 by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. But the nomination stalled for two years as a result of former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s toll order — which suspended certain deadlines, prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
When the toll order was lifted in 2022, the designation process began again. Once the nomination came before the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee in November 2022 it further stalled, in part because then-First District Councilman Gil Cedillo sought a lesser “site of” designation. That would have allowed the property owner to demolish or redevelop the home.
When Hernandez defeated Cedillo in the 2022 election to represent the First District, she inherited the matter.
Hernandez sought to continue the proposed “site of” designation, saying the First District would “benefit from a community health center or affordable housing at the site that provides access to the community” while still uplifting Kight’s legacy.
However, the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee denied the councilwomen’s amendment in June 2023.
Hernandez’s planning director, Helen Campbell, then stepped in and worked to bring people together, including the property owner, tenants of the property and stakeholders to identify a solution — leading to the higher-level historical designation that was approved Tuesday.
LGBTQ+ activists had the criticized the proposed lesser designation, citing a need to preserve LGBTQ+ history.
Miki Jackson, a close friend of Kight’s and an AIDS Healthcare Foundation consultant who led past community action, told City News Service that the city has “so few monuments, less than 1%, in this whole city that have to do with the LGBTQ population.”’
Hernandez, meanwhile, said, “We’re not about making problems. We’re here to uplift solutions. That’s what we’ve done. We’ve been working toward a solution that not only will save the house at the current site, we’re not moving the house.”
“It will be designated as a city Historic Cultural Monument, but it will also be rehabilitated so that it could eventually be open to the public to serve as a hub for the LGBTQIA+ community in our district and beyond.”
During Tuesday’s council meeting, dozens of LGBTQ+ Angelenos and community members seeking to preserve the Kight home reiterated its significance to the LGBTQ+ history.
Betty Dumastuto, a mother of a “queer daughter and mother-in-law to a trans man,” said she couldn’t stress enough the significance of honoring the legacy of key historical figures in physical places.
“It is important and matters, especially at a moment in time when the rights of LGBTQ+ folks are under attack, and I ask the council members to be on the right side of history,” Dumastuto said.