To demonstrate, Close’s meticulously detailed head of mustachioed “Robert,” 9 feet tall, is installed next to its maquette, an enlarged and subdivided black-and-white photograph overlaid with a tight grid.

About 340 million years ago, leaves sported veins that branched like a tree, with a main “trunk” subdividing into multiple branches.

The history of the Queen of Elysian Heights is not entirely clear, but it is believed to have been built in 1895, around the time when the community was first subdivided.

In that case, Baretto argued that the judge who gave him “possession” of his room indirectly gave him the entire building because it had never been subdivided.

The building’s residents, mostly Mexican and Central American immigrants who subdivided units or slept in shifts to save money, couldn’t afford to move.