Architect’s About-Face Helps Transform L. A. : Brenda Levin Finds Challenges in Redefining the City’s Style Through Input in Restoration Projects

For a person who didn’t like Los Angeles one little bit when she got here 10 years ago, Brenda Levin has done an about-face. And because of her architectural input, the face of the city she used to dislike is changing, too.

“I hated it for two years, especially from an architectural standpoint,” she said of Los Angeles, after moving here from Boston in 1976.

Armed With Stereotypes

“I have to admit I came here believing all the Eastern stereotypes about the city. I even made a button that said: ‘SUNSHINE IS BORING.’

“Los Angeles was especially boring from the architectural standpoint,” Levin added. “But all my frame of reference was East Coast. Then, one clear winter day I looked out and saw the mountains with snow on them and decided I had woefully been looking at the short views, not the long vista of the natural beauty of the Basin. I began to see Los Angeles for the unique place it is.”

Los Angeles, in return, has offered Levin an opportunity to expand her architectural horizons. In addition to running her own architectural firm, Levin and Associates Inc., she serves on the 25-member Citizens Advisory Committee to the city Planning Commission.

“With 25 members we have all sorts of viewpoints, from architects to lawyers to neighborhood groups. We’re looking at the future of planning in Los Angeles and how Los Angeles copes with its own growth. It’s clear that growth is going to happen. Before now sprawl has been a major theme. But now we’re talking about densification. Each area will have to deal with increased growth and increased density. It’s a learning experience.”

Although she is studying the future of Los Angeles, Levin has made a prominent architectural mark in the city with her renovation and restoration of some of its classic old buildings.

It has been a learn-as-you-go experience for Levin.

After working in 1976 with architect John Lautner on the redesign of Bob Hope’s Palm Springs home, which had burned, Levin got a job in 1977 with Group Arcon, the company that was renovating the Oviatt Building, 617 S. Olive St. It was the first major commercial renovation in the rebirth of downtown Los Angeles.

“The Oviatt was really the hallmark of renovation here,” said Levin, who became the project architect on the Oviatt, built in 1927 by financier James Oviatt. “I think one reason I got the job is that they thought because I was from the East I knew about renovation. But I didn’t.”

First Try at Renovation

Levin said the work on the Oviatt Building taught her much about renovation, as it did the developer, Ratkovich, Bowers and Perez Inc., which also was attempting its first renovation project.

“After the building was finished, Wayne Ratkovich asked me if I wanted to do the Rex (Rex Il Ristorante, a $1.5-million restaurant on the ground floor of the Oviatt),” Levin said. “I opened my office in 1980 with that one job.”

The front doors of the Rex, once a men’s haberdashery that catered to movie stars of the ‘20s and ‘30s, are original--signed Lalique etched glass created by French glass and jewelry designer Rene Lalique--as are the elevator doors, mailboxes and the ceiling of the lobby.

“But much of the Lalique had been sold off or destroyed,” Levin said. “There was no way to reproduce it, but you could reinterpret it. We used a three-dimensional system of frames and sand-blasted glass that was similar in feeling to the Lalique and would be something that would be appropriate with the age and era of the building.”

The glass work was done by stained-glass artist Jane Marquis, who reproduced 200 panes of glass.

In 1980 while working on the Rex, Levin and her husband, David Abel, began building their own house on property they had bought in 1978 in the Los Feliz hills.

‘A Gruesome Year’

“That was one of those killer years, 1980,” Levin said during a recent breakfast at her home. “David started his own (consulting) firm, I started mine, we had a baby and built the house. It was a gruesome year, but we got through it. We like living so close and working downtown and love the downtown people.”

Levin and Abel’s home is a contemporary house designed by Levin and built on a hillside. It was constructed of two triangular forms, one three stories, the other, two, connected by a main stairwell with a large skylight. Levin used wood, concrete block and sheet metal for its construction.

A week after their son, Eliot, who will turn 6 in October, was born, Levin took him to the office with her.

“He only had one baby sitter until he was 4,” she said. “So he had real continuity in his life. I was working on the Rex and, at meetings, every single contractor wanted to hold him. He literally spent the first five months of his life in the office. David’s office was across the hall, so we shared. That’s why you have your own business, so you can do things like that.”

David Abel, a Harvard-educated attorney, decided not to practice law here, but to become a public affairs consultant, specializing in transportation, telecommunications, real estate and education.

He serves as a representative to the community for real estate developer Melvin Simon’s Hollywood Center project, and is a founder of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a nonprofit foundation that has raised $1.4 million for public educational projects.

“I like what I do,” Abel said. “Most lawyers would like what I do. The problem with law is that it has become too segmented. I like the position I’m in now, the aspects of trying to build a great city. I don’t know if I could do what I do back East. Here there are enough wealthy people with enough drive and enough interest to let you do things. Los Angeles is refreshing and it’s open. That doesn’t mean we don’t make a lot of mistakes, but it does mean it’s fun.”

Levin grew up in Teaneck, N.J.; Abel in Pittsburgh, before his family relocated to Sacramento when he was 13.

The couple met in Boston, when she was about to study architecture at Harvard and he to enroll in law school at Boston University, having finished his undergraduate studies at Harvard. They were married in 1976, shortly after moving to Los Angeles.

‘Wanted Two Things’

“I wanted two things in the marriage contract,” Levin said with a smile. “One, I can use my maiden name, and two, David won’t run for office.”

After working a year for the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission, Abel took a job as director of training with the Coro Foundation in Los Angeles. He had gone through the Coro program here as a fellow in 1969 before going back east.

“David always says when he left here in 1969 there was no downtown,” Levin said. “I am very pleased to be a part of what’s been happening. Boston is a wonderful city, and I still crave it. I put one condition on coming to Los Angeles--that we go back to Boston every year so I can see fall. But we’ve been so busy, we only went back two years ago.”

This year, both Levin and Abel turned 40, a fact neither of them quite can believe.

“I can’t fit it together,” said Levin. “I thought I’d be more mature when I was 40. But I really I don’t know what that means.”

Said Abel: “Now that I’ve turned 40, I’ve changed from the 20s. I believe in local government. But I believe that the private sector works with solutions to very public problems. Take transportation. I’m not supportive of Metro Rail, but I think there are a lot of private solutions. It’s interplay between the public and private that I live on.”

An Ambitious Job

After finishing the Rex, Brenda Levin took on a most ambitious project, restoration of the Wiltern Theater, an Art Deco theater on the southeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, after preservationists’ protests had saved it from the wrecking ball in 1979.

Franklin Life Insurance Co. was planning to demolish the 1931 theater and office building, called the Pellissier Building, before it was bought by the Ratkovich firm.

Levin began work as project manager on the Pellissier tower in 1982, then the following year took on the renovation of the Fine Arts Building, built in 1927 at 811 7th St. She worked on both buildings simultaneously.

“The Wiltern is the purest form of restoration that I’ve worked on,” Levin said. “Most of the other projects are renovation. I would much rather work on a commercial scale than residential,” she said. “Residential construction is so difficult and it takes a long, long time.” She is, though, currently completing a house remodeling project at Venice beach, in addition to the commercial buildings.

“We finished the Fine Arts in 1984, and went back to the Wiltern (to complete the theater),” Levin explained. It opened May of 1985, but we haven’t gotten rid of it yet. We’re still doing things, nothing of consequence, but fussy little things.”

Back to the Original

Levin said that the Wiltern Theater was the only project “really close to the original. We brought it back to what it was in 1931. We took the liberty of changing some colors, some that were no longer appropriate. But the major things were all code-related issues and functions of the theater. The theater was built with a 29-foot-deep stage and the depth needed to be increased. We ended up cutting a hole in the back wall to produce a viable area for performing arts, ballet and opera.”

The original interior decorative painting and plaster work in the Wiltern and the Fine Arts building were done by A.B. Heinsbergen, whose son Tony, worked on restoring both interiors.

Levin still serves as a consultant on the Subway Terminal Building renovation downtown, but earlier this year, as a volunteer civic project, she completed the Downtown Women’s Center on Main Street, the first residence for Skid Row women.

“That was the most significant thing personally and architecturally I’ve ever done,” she said. “Jill (Halverson, the founder and director of the center) is an extraordinary person. Alison Wright was the project architect, and it was a significant job for both of us. It gave the firm an opportunity to give something back to the community.”

Levin’s current downtown renovation is the Grand Central Market, on Broadway between 3rd and 4th streets.

“It’s a very exciting project,” Levin said. “It will be in five phases, encompassing Broadway to Hill through one building. It’s a great opportunity to use the building as a resource for meshing of the Anglo and Hispanic cultures.”

Renovating the Market

Phase 1 for the Grand Central will deal with renovation of the existing market. The other phases will include renovating the six-story building above the market, installing escalators that open up the market to the building above, renovating the facades on both Broadway and Hill and putting in a parking garage that also includes a truck delivery level, “so we can get some of the trucks off Hill Street,” Levin said.

She thinks the project will probably take three years. “But it should be much more inviting and workable and needs to reflect the ethnic diversity of the city. Broadway is such an exiting street, and Hill Street has a lot of potential.”

Levin is working with Ira Yellin, developer for the Grand Central Market renovation, and said that they are currently “looking at tying in the Million Dollar Theater building with the market project.”

In the future, Levin said she would like to do some architectural designing in new construction. “I’d like to do that using the things we’ve learned in renovation, restoration and reuse projects, like the Downtown Women’s Center. . . . Look at the success of Melrose Avenue in making something exciting for pedestrians that is uniquely Los Angeles, not imitating New York.

“Quite honestly, I’ve enjoyed every renovation project. I love doing them,” Levin said. “But I want to translate that to larger scale work in new construction. . . . I really saw coming to California as the end of the world for me, but I got a real surprise. This is one of the best cities for me in terms of opportunity, access and fulfilling some of the professional dreams I have. Los Angeles is open to ideas. It has given me lots of opportunities, and I’ve been lucky. There are much tighter environments back East in terms of windows of opportunity. I would have gone through a far more rigid tracking back there. I’d probably still be doing stair details and toilet drawings.”