Two blocks of pink and cream stucco open ahead of you on Espanola Way, looking as if they were airlifted from a Spanish colonial village and set down between two Art Deco blocks. That was exactly the developer's intention. N.B.T. Roney built it in 1925 as an artists' colony and Mediterranean-style shopping street, meant to evoke the villages of Andalusia and the south of France.
The buildings are low, their facades covered in wrought iron balconies, Moorish arches, and climbing bougainvillea. For a few years in the 1920s it hosted artists' studios and small galleries. Al Capone ran a gambling parlor here.
Desi Arnaz — the Cuban bandleader who would go on to found Desilu Productions with Lucille Ball — got his start performing on this street in the 1930s. Today Espanola Way is lined with outdoor cafes and small shops, and on weekends it hosts a market. It's easy to walk past without noticing it's there.
Don't make that mistake. Step in and let the scale of the thing — intimate, human, unhurried — do its work.