Whitley Heights Residence

A remodeled Spanish Revival house in Whitley Heights features a striking 15-foot California Sycamore mantle, sourced and milled from a nearby tree slated for removal. Collaborating with designer Leslie Shapiro Joyal, we transformed this local wood into a stunning centerpiece that pays homage to its origins.

A remodeled Spanish Revival house in the Whitley Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles utilizes custom-cut and locally sourced California Sycamore.

We worked with designer Leslie Shapiro Joyal to select, cut, dry, and surface a stunning 15-foot by 3-inch-thick California Sycamore board, which she used as the centerpiece of the living room. The Sycamore mantle is installed less than one mile from where the 70-year-old tree lived its first life.

In May 2017, a gorgeous, 80-plus-year-old, codominant trunk California Sycamore was slated for removal on Holly Drive, Hollywood Dell. The Sycamore is a signature native of Southern California, but it has been hit hard with the polyphagous shot hole borer beetle since the late 2000s. This particular tree was riddled with beetles. We took these beauties home to ACL and milled them the following week.

A few months later, as the boards and slabs from the Holly Drive California Sycamore tree came out of the kiln, designer Leslie Shapiro Joyal stopped by ACL. Still warm, she ogled the piece and sent a photo to her client for approval. We asked where in Los Angeles her project was located. She told us in Whitley Heights, a stone’s throw from where the tree came down in Hollywood Dell.

A riparian Plane tree, the California Sycamore is endemic to Southern California. Its whimsical gray-white bark with earth-tone craters gives way to large, sprawling, 5-lobed light green leaves. Its whimsy does not end with its appearance. Its wood has a salmon-pink hue with breathtaking quarter sawn grain resembling a tiger’s stripes. Sycamore can be a real nudge to season, but after drying at low temperatures for a long time, this wood cuts and works like butter, making the shop take on an aroma of nutty cinnamon.