Taking Inventory of History

There have been many close calls. The Cinerama Dome in Hollywood was almost gutted by bulldozers, as was a Richard Neutra home in Brentwood, until preservationists rushed in at the last minute.

To forestall such eleventh-hour battles to save threatened buildings, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved spending $5 million to tally the city’s historic resources.

Armed with such a survey, city officials would know when a building is historic, instead of learning about it after a demolition permit has been issued and protesters pack the council chambers.

“For too long, historic preservation has been an afterthought, an oversight, or a political weapon for opponents of development projects,” said Councilman Jack Weiss, who pushed for the survey at the suggestion of officials from the Getty Conservation Institute.

There’s just one hitch: The council doesn’t have the $5 million. With the city struggling to hire police officers, the money is unlikely to come from the general fund.

Instead, city officials hope to attract contributions from private sources, including the Getty.

Preservationists are determined to help find the money, saying it is crucial that the study be done.

“This is probably the most important citywide historic preservation initiative to be launched in years,” said Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy.

According to officials at the Getty, less than 15% of the vast and eclectic array of buildings in Los Angeles has been surveyed.

More than 40 years ago, when Los Angeles created its Cultural Heritage Commission and began designating buildings as culturally and historically significant, the city appeared to be at the forefront of the preservation movement.

But officials never followed up with a coordinated survey to determine which structures were worth saving. Instead, nominations are made on a random basis.

Someone might nominate something because they like it, or because they do not want to see it developed and see historic designation as a way to slow the process down.

A standardized approach could bring some coherence to a process that now recognizes concrete trestle footings in Silver Lake that once held up the old Red Car tracks as historic, but not the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

The city officials who review development proposals now “have extremely limited information and no systematic official resources or method to ascertain the potential significance or sensitivity of undesignated properties,” the Getty wrote in a 2001 report.

The result is “the destruction of important buildings along with the erosion of community trust and loss of investment dollars,” the report said.

A citywide survey that would identify significant properties, establish priorities for conservation and increase awareness of the value of preservation could change all that, City Council members said.

“Los Angeles is a relatively new city,” said Councilwoman Wendy Greuel. “But it has a wonderful history, and one we need to preserve.”

Some council members also talked of surveying not just buildings, but also the social and cultural histories of neighborhoods.

The city might want to preserve buildings, such as drive-throughs or gas stations, which were integral to the development of the city’s world-famous car culture, for example. Or its old movie studio lots.

Suburban tract developments, such as those featuring the now ubiquitous ranch house, also could make the list, as could ethnic communities such as Little Armenia or Thai Town.

“This has the potential to be a nationwide model for the management of historic resources,” city analyst John Wickham told council members.