I decided to take some action about that property with the awesome longhorn skull painted over the front gate … I reached out to the real estate agent whose name was on the front sign. It turns out it’s being packaged with the property next door; two buildings, the one I liked used to be residential, but the additional property next door used to be a retail clothing store. This got me curious – could I find more info about the old retail store, to see what used to be there? I didn’t find much on the store, but I did find that these two properties included some now lost murals!
Check out the archival pictures I found: the retail building on the left used to have a mural with some cattle ranchers on horseback overlooking their herd of longhorn cattle, all in silhouette form (it’s now just a plain adobe wall). The mural on the residential building had the skull over the door which I saw, but also had a starry blue sky with two leaping jackrabbits, which is also now gone, as you can see from the current plain adobe wall. I wonder how or why these murals were lost? Damage to the wall which needed to be covered with fresh adobe? Or just cleaned up as the properties were needed to be sold?
If I were to buy these buildings, I think I’d have to restore the lost murals! They certainly were (and would be) attention grabbers, which – for a new retail business, would be a helpful thing. If I were to pursue this, it would be an easy decision: an art gallery in one, and my home in the other. It does hold some appeal, with one probably-major drawback: Rodeo Road has a lot of traffic, which would be great for the gallery, less so for a home.