More than a decade ago, German tourist Martin Schall was near the end of Route 66 road trip. He took a wrong turn and ended up in downtown Los Angeles.
He became awed by the city’s skyscrapers and architecture, and started shooting pictures. He’s returned to L.A. nine times to document that city’s rich architecture, according to a feature in the Los Angeles Times. He has documented his work at You-are-here.com, which contains more than 1,700 images from the City of Angels.
The website has made Schall a celebrity in the urban design world. Building owners beg him, via e-mail, to include their buildings on his site. And preservationists and other architectural aficionados use it as a bible of L.A. architecture.
But only a small number of his fans realize Schall is not a native Angeleno, an architect or a professional photographer — but rather a German oil and gas engineer whose evenings are spent toiling away on the website from a sleek, sparely decorated loft in Kornwestheim, just outside of Stuttgart.
“It’s one of those situations where, in many ways, it takes someone from the outside to know and appreciate a place best,” said Ken Bernstein, manager of the Los Angeles Planning Department’s historical resources office. “I don’t know anything about [Schall], but he is clearly someone who has a deep appreciation and insight for Los Angeles.” […]
All the time, Schall said, “there are people writing e-mails, saying, ‘I have a nice building here.’ Then I find the architect’s name and see that there are five other buildings by him. Then it starts, again and again.”
Schall divvies up the site by downtown and Los Angeles County. He also has links for Googie architecture and restaurant photos, both of which should be of considerable interest to Route 66 fans. Also, his collection of modern buildings is sorted by decade.
Warning: You could surf Schall’s site all afternoon.