Nestled beneath Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, in the hills of idyllic Beachwood Canyon, are the Krotona apartments, a Spanish Colonial Revival complex with vines creeping up the sides. The main apartments surround a beautiful courtyard, and next to them rises the Temple of the Rosy Cross, a former religious meeting place now divided into studio apartments. Once the site of a groundbreaking commune, Krotona has been a residential apartment complex for nearly a century.
“Krotona holds that incredible power,” says Courtney Sell, a local documentary filmmaker and historian of Los Angeles’s spiritual communities who has led tours of the property. “You can feel this vibration—it’s a magical vibration. It’s a really special place.”
Over the years, Krotona played host to everyone from Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie Chaplin to Frances McDormand, the Coen Brothers, and Quentin Tarantino. A young Doris Day lived in the Temple of the Rosy Cross.
But today there are cracks in the façades. Inside some apartments, mold can be seen growing on the walls. Wood is warped and rotted from floods, and flimsy windows are held together with tape.
The disrepair of the complex, which holds a total of 30 units, has pitted neighbor against neighbor. A tenant-led initiative is currently lobbying for it to get designation as a Historic-Cultural Monument, and several tenants have filed lawsuits accusing the complex’s longtime owner, Mayer Moizel, of fraud, health-and safety violations, intentional negligence, breach of contract, emotional distress, and forcing tenants to self-evict due to uninhabitable conditions. Some tenants have stopped paying rent due to what they say is management’s refusal to make substantial repairs to their units. (Moizel denies all of the allegations against him.)
There are also fears that Moizel or his family, who have placed the Krotona in a trust, may be intentionally letting the property decay so that it becomes unsalvageable, the theory being that the trust could then sell the land in the luxury neighborhood, where homes often sell for more than $3 million, and make a nice profit.
Moizel’s attorney, Allan B. Cooper, of Ervin Cohen & Jessup, counters that “these fears are not real … and have been made up for the sole purpose of inflaming the public and prejudicing it against Mr. Moizel. Mr. Moizel has owned the Krotona apartments for more than 50 years and cherishes it. He has never had any intention to tear down Krotona.”
But the fear among some tenants persists. Designation as a Historic-Cultural Monument could stall any demolition for up to one year. It would also ensure that all proposals for work on the complex be subject to approval by the Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources before any permits for alteration are issued.
The story is part of a larger trend in Los Angeles, where relatively affordable historic apartments and homes are being torn down and replaced with expensive “luxury” apartments. Wealthy investors are increasingly buying buildings simply for the valuable land beneath them—and destroying valuable pieces of Los Angeles history along the way.
In April of this year, the actor Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger, daughter of Arnold, who married in 2019, razed the Zimmerman house, a historic midcentury masterpiece designed by Craig Ellwood and landscaped by Garrett Eckbo, in Brentwood, infuriating preservationists and neighbors.
Then there is Marilyn Monroe’s last-ever home, also in Brentwood, which was set for demolition earlier this year by its new owners. The Spanish Colonial Revival bungalow is the only home Monroe ever owned; it is also where she died, in 1962. When plans to destroy the home were uncovered, a huge groundswell of preservationists and historians banded together and secured its Historic-Cultural Monument status in late June. Today, negotiations with the owners are ongoing.
But not all of Krotona fears demolition. Some longtime residents support Moizel, and feel that a group of newcomers have become troublesome crusaders, threatening to disrupt their low-rent and bohemian way of life.
It’s true that many of those voicing concerns and leading the charge against Moizel are relatively new renters who were appalled by the conditions of the apartments and what they see as cheap, negligent, and abusive management.
This has infuriated some longer-term tenants who glory in its gritty, historic atmosphere and rent-controlled status, and the laissez-faire attitude of the gruff but charming Moizel.
“This was built as a place for community. It was literally a communal-living environment,” says Pati Dubroff, a Hollywood makeup artist who moved to Krotona last year.
“It’s so fractured. And people feel broken.”
The Origin Myth
The drama over Krotona is only understandable in light of the property’s mystical past. In 1912, a Virginian named Albert Powell Warrington purchased about 10 acres of land in the then sparsely populated Beachwood Canyon, in the Hollywood Hills. Warrington was a follower of Theosophy, a religious and philosophical practice founded in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, a Russian-born occultist, which mixed Asian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism with secretive magical practices and a strong belief in the equality of the sexes.
Warrington deemed Los Angeles’s tolerant, wide-open spaces magnetically, mathematically, and magically perfect for the religion’s American headquarters, and chose the name “Krotona” after the city of Crotone, in Italy, where the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras and his followers lived.
Construction of the Krotona Institute of Theosophy, a modern-day “Garden of Eden,” was funded by its wealthy followers. The main headquarters was designed by famed architects Frank Mead and Richard Requa—the duo behind much of Ojai, a ritzy city 80 miles north of Los Angeles—and featured kitchens, guest rooms, offices for the Theosophical magazine The Messenger, a lecture room, and a meditation dome.
In 1914, the Temple of the Rosy Cross was built next door. Designed by the noted architecture firm Heineman & Heineman, the Moorish Revival temple featured mystical stained-glass windows and hosted exclusive services by members of the Order of the Star in the East (a spiritual organization that was co-founded by Blavatsky’s successor, Annie Besant, and overseen at Krotona by Marie Russak Hotchener, an opera singer turned amateur architect).
“They did magic,” says Mary Gent, a longtime manager at the Standard Hotel who currently lives inside Rosy Cross. “They did Egyptian magic. They did Book of the Dead magic. They drew a pentagram in the middle of the floor, set up an altar.”
Wealthy Theosophists went on to build fantastical homes around the temple. Residents like Hotchener, the spiritual thinker Alice Evans (who helped coin the term “New Age”), and The Messenger editor May Rogers became active in the burgeoning artistic and esoteric communities of Los Angeles. In 1918, the Theosophist Christine Wetherill Stevenson produced the successful play Light of Asia, which told the story of the Buddha and was choreographed by the legendary dancer Ruth St. Denis, at the Institute. She would go on to help found the Hollywood Bowl and the Ford theater.
“Krotona was this community center that had a very, very strong pull that brought people from all over the country,” says Los Angeles Conservancy neighborhood-outreach coordinator Lindsay Mulcahy, who is currently spearheading the push to have the complex recognized as a Historic-Cultural Monument. “Through the lecture series that they had, they were able to introduce a lot of Angelenos to concepts and practices that today are just part of the air that we breathe here in L.A.… They had a vegetarian cafeteria. They were practicing yoga.”
“Krotona holds that incredible power. You can feel this vibration—it’s a magical vibration. It’s a really special place.”
By the 1920s, the 300 or so eccentrics who called Krotona home had become appalled by the burgeoning flashy and decadent Hollywood community that was growing around them. In 1924, the Institute moved to Ojai, where it remains sought after by spiritualists and occultists to this day.
In 1926, meanwhile, Rupert Julian, who directed the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, and his wife, the actress and director Elsie Jane Wilson, converted the Los Angeles Krotona headquarters into commercial apartments populated in large part by Hollywood people. (By the 1940s, Beachwood Canyon had become an expensive neighborhood filled with film-industry executives’ mansions and actors’ cottages.)
Moizel, a real-estate investor who owned property around Los Angeles County, purchased the Krotona complex in 1978. Today, some see him as a steward of its history and the reason for its survival, and even those opposed to him say he proudly speaks of Krotona’s rich history. “I would personally like to thank Mayer Moizel, Krotona’s Godfather all these years,” one former resident wrote on Instagram in July. “Anyone else would have destroyed it years earlier.”
To others, Moizel is responsible for Krotona’s decline. As a former resident wrote on the complex’s Yelp page: “You reap what you sow, and this guy’s karma will keep coming back on him.”
According to public records, in the first half of 2024, seven current residents sued Moizel in civil court for a host of issues, while three former residents sued in the recent past due to illnesses related to alleged toxic mold. (The cases were dropped.) More lawsuits are expected.
“Like most tenants in rent-stabilized units, the inhabitants of the Krotona have been willing to accept some problems in exchange for the relatively low rents they’re paying,” Casey Maddren, president of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles, wrote on the Web site CityWatch LA in 2023. “But in recent years the problems have continued to grow, and the owner apparently isn’t willing to make even basic repairs.”
One of the tenants leading the charge against Moizel is Gent, who moved to Krotona in 2018. Gent has been unbowed by the intimidation from management and shunning from neighbors she says she has received because of her advocacy. (“I’m a Viking,” she says. “It’s in my bloodline. I come from a lot of very, very ferocious bloodlines.”)
Upon first moving in, Gent admits she overlooked the dilapidated state of the apartments—the lack of heaters, the absence of on-site managers (which Cooper refutes), the rotting wood, the broken glass, the water-warped windows. But numerous occurrences became cause for concern. She recalls helping her neighbors attempt to stop a flood in an apartment near hers, which she says Moizel refused to address immediately, and spoke to tenants who believed they became sick because of black mold in their apartments. After that, she began reaching out to city agencies, which resulted in official involvement and site visits to Krotona.
Gent also helped other tenants who felt threatened and ignored by Moizel learn about their rights. Residents I spoke to claim to have been served with unlawful eviction notices and say that needed repairs have been ignored. They have been allegedly intimidated by Moizel, who wanted them to hide violations from inspectors. (Through Cooper, Moizel denies these claims and counters that residents have threatened both him and tenants supportive of him.)
One resident, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation, claims Moizel bullied her into hiding a broken toilet from inspectors, and that a faulty smoke detector covered in rat feces failed to alert her to a fire. She also says she had to buy and position sandbags herself to protect her apartment during a rainstorm as water poured in through the closed windows.
“It triggered my PTSD,” she says. “I ended up scared, sitting in my car all day.”
“They were able to introduce a lot of Angelenos to concepts and practices that today are just part of the air that we breathe here in L.A.… They had a vegetarian cafeteria. They were practicing yoga.”
A relative newcomer to Krotona, Dubroff was oblivious to the state of the complex when the meditation dome became available for rent in April of last year. “I knew how important this place was,” she says. “I just had this deep voice that was saying, ‘You need to be there,” whatever that meant.”
But when Dubroff was given the keys to her new apartment, she says she was shocked by what she found. Though she had visited the apartment before, after the previous tenants’ belongings were removed she discovered that the bathroom window was missing, vines had broken through the kitchen window, the wood was so rotted it was soft to the touch, dead insects and rat droppings covered the original meditation benches, and the ceiling sagged with water damage.
She poured thousands of dollars into revitalizing the space. Together with industry friends who were out of work because of the Writers Guild strike, she plastered the walls, restored the altar, and painted the dome gold.
During our interview, Dubroff sits in her apartment, serene but impassioned, surrounded by religious and esoteric art, figurines, and twinkling decorative stars left by the Theosophists.
Dubroff held spiritual circles and gatherings in the dome, attended by women with similar interests. But she warned them not to come if their immune systems were compromised. Mold is visible under the plaster, and the smell is overwhelming, despite the open windows and running fans. (AIR MAIL has reviewed a report asserting the presence of mold, which earlier dome tenants warned Dubroff about after she moved in. Cooper counters tenants’ claims of mold problems and lack of remediation over the years. “Any mold issues found are de minimis and remediated,” he wrote in a statement to AIR MAIL.”)
Determined to save Krotona from what she and others see as willful neglect, Dubroff contacted the Los Angeles Conservancy in June of last year. (The Conservancy takes no position in the clash between Moizel and his tenants.) In February of this year, a Los Angeles Housing Department Inspection Report listed almost four pages of violations at Krotona. There were 22 violations listed as “high,” including missing smoke detectors, exposed and out-of-date wiring, and unsafe decks and stairs.
As of this past May, the city listed all violations as resolved, although residents allege that many of the problems remain, and that the fixes were haphazard and not always done by licensed contractors.
The seven lawsuits only heightened tensions at Krotona. Cooper claims that this is part of a growing “cottage industry” of tenants suing his client not because of actual grievances but in an attempt to avoid paying back rents owed from the coronavirus moratorium on rent in Los Angeles.
“Mr. Moizel’s position is that the complaints made by these tenants, and the facts they allege, are largely created out of whole cloth and are attempts to vex, intimidate and harass Mr. Moizel, an 80 year-old man who had serious brain surgery two and a half years ago,” he says. “Through this conduct, they are trying to get him to forgo their rent and to pay them large sums of money in order to buy himself peace of mind at this stage of his life.”
Under this cloud of anger, on July 18, 2024, a contentious hearing was held by the Cultural Heritage Commission at Los Angeles City Hall to take the nomination of Krotona under consideration. Mulcahy presented the case for Krotona’s designation and was backed by supporters including Sell, Taschen’s Jessica Hundley, the documentary filmmaker Jodi Wille, and the esoteric scholar Ronnie Pontiac.
Cooper represented Moizel. Although in an e-mail to AIR MAIL he asserts that Moizel “has never generally opposed such a designation,” he struck a different tone at the hearing. Cooper told the Commission that the complex’s historical relevance had long since passed and that too many alterations had taken place for the interiors to be landmarked. Stating that “designation as a cultural monument can be used as a weapon of mischief,” he blamed activist tenants for the mountain of problems his client was currently facing.
“What my client is confronted with is a situation where on the one hand people are saying you need to make changes to this building and on the other hand they’re saying, no, we want to designate it as a cultural monument and therefore you can’t make certain changes to this building,” he said.
His daughter, Valerie Moizel, who has had numerous run-ins with tenants and, like her father, has been accused of bringing lawyers and associates to intimidate inspectors and residents, spoke of the turmoil’s effects on her father. “I want you to understand the emotional distress that my father has been under because of this,” she said, her voice shaking. “It’s been excruciating.”
Proponents for the designation were not sympathetic, claiming Moizel placed himself in this predicament by allowing Krotona to fall into disrepair.
Ultimately, the Moizels’ protest was unsuccessful, and the council unanimously voted to take the nomination under consideration. The next hearing will be held on November 21, when commissioners will report on their site-visit findings.
However, there are some people who won’t be at Krotona by the time the building is landmarked, as they hope it will be. Dubroff left Krotona in September, and Gent plans to move out soon. Moizel remains in his office at Krotona every day.
Dubroff and Gent feel secure in knowing they did all they could to protect a place they see as historically and spiritually sacred. “I want justice,” Gent says. “I want this place to be protected. But it already is.... Just so you know, in the spirit world, the way it works, they’re on different time. It’s already happened. It’s already done.”
Hadley Meares is a Los Angeles–based writer
