GHOSTS OF DOWNTOWN

"The windows are the same, though I never realized how grand they are, how high and wide. Maybe that's because back then they were masked by cheesy drapes. I probably never saw them this clean either. When no one in the tour group was looking, I rested my hand on one, for connection. Each night when my father and I left the office, we'd open these windows for fresh air; in the morning, I'd flip on the AC and pull them down to shut out the street's noise and stink."

"From 1970 to 1984, the northwest corner of the seventh floor of the Continental Building at 4th and Spring was my late father's bankruptcy law office. It was the epitome of old downtown, a bleak two-room suite in a seedy building just a block from the skid row missions."

"The walls were dirty beige, the carpet oatmeal, the furniture a utilitarian mix of file cabinets, water cooler, battered wood desks. All gone now. Everything from those days is gone, everything but the windows."

The author revisits the seventh floor of the Continental Building at 4th and Spring, where their late father operated a bankruptcy law office from 1970 to 1984. The space, located in a deteriorating downtown area near skid row, featured utilitarian furnishings and dingy décor in shades of beige and oatmeal. During the tour, the author notices the windows remain unchanged—grand, high, and wide—though now clean and visible without the cheesy drapes that once obscured them. These windows held personal significance, as the author and father would open them nightly for fresh air and close them each morning. The author reflects on how everything from that era has disappeared except the windows, which serve as the sole physical connection to those memories.

Read at Los Angeles Times