A landmark condemned as much by changes in mood as by economics.

The news came as no surprise--but still with a prick of pathos--that the Tail O’ the Cock restaurant is going to be demolished next year to make way for a shopping center.

In a community that has exhausted its land and is still impelled by the urge to build, there was no prospect of survival for a sprawling, single-story restaurant with slightly British pretensions on the prime intersection of Ventura and Coldwater Canyon boulevards.

But probably the old landmark was just as much condemned by changes in mood as it was by economics.

For 39 years the Tail O’ the Cock carried on a tradition of quiet refinement that the Valley needed. Its English country styling was in good taste, not garishly exaggerated as in so many buildings of its type. Inside, the same reserved simplicity gave it a look of integrity.

Recent news stories reporting the decision of its new owner, Studio City developer Herbert M. Pikens, to demolish the Tail O’ the Cock, characterized it as a hangout for entertainment people. That may have been true.

But I think it was more of a hangout for middle-aged Valley people who sought a reserved atmosphere, a dependable meal and somebody good at the piano bar, to keep the memories alive.

Certainly it wasn’t the glitzy allure like that of the Bistro or Scandia’s that brought them.

The Tail O’ the Cock was much subtler institution than either of those. What it stood for, I believe, was a respite from the vista of tract houses, auto parts stores and supermarkets.

Like the Sportsmen’s Lodge just across the intersection, only on a more intimate scale, it was a rare place where you could entertain someone of class in the Valley without feeling shame.

The Valley doesn’t seem to need that any more. There are now major hotels on the West Side and the East. There are chic continental cafes up and down the boulevard. There are Chinese and Italian restaurants with so much class on the inside that it doesn’t seem to matter that you find them in stucco-faced shopping centers in Northridge.

It had been 10 years since my last visit when I stopped in to Tail O’ the Cock last week, partly to wish it goodby, partly to see what the restaurant had come to. I suspected the worst, imagining a make-do staff and a no-name pianist lulling people through a tawdry meal.

It didn’t turn out that way. A long, graceful bar, deep red booths, handsome wood archways still conveyed a tone of understated class.

There was a sluggish air about the place. It wasn’t clear whether the slowness was an expression of restraint and elegance or merely a sign of resignation.

The menu offered a choice of four basic specials, all including house wine.

A graying waitress in laced-front peasant girl’s outfit explained for probably the thousandth time that a dollar was automatically knocked off the special price of $9.95 and transferred to the beverage.

Though this device surely didn’t promise great dining, the dinner was respectable.

Most of a couple of dozen patrons were seated in the smaller front room around a black concert piano.

A woman in a black and red cocktail dress sat beside the keyboard sipping a drink. Two men sat motionlessly on the other side of the piano.

Don Ferris, a small man in a dark suit, was playing. He had a pointed nose, and a helmet-like cover of wavy gray hair obscured his forehead.

He played with the familiarity of someone entertaining in his home. He started with show music and played several tunes in succession, one drifting into the next. Somewhere along the line he switched to Verdi and Chopin, the transition unnoticed.

At one point an elderly man in a polyester suit walked out of the back room with a Jimmy Durante gait and whispered into Ferris’s ear.

Ferris yielded his seat. The man played vigorously for 10 minutes, covering the usual piano bar routine. The audience clapped.

I followed him back to a large table full of his friends and relatives.

He said he was Al DeCrescent. He used to play for Jimmy Durante, also Rudy Vallee. Now he’s at Micheli’s in Hollywood.

“He plays where I work,” a large woman in a black dress, sitting across from him, said.

Meanwhile, Ferris continued to play as if in his living room. At times he stopped to chat with guests coming or going.

And he yielded the piano again when DeCrescent and his party were leaving.

This time the woman in black accompanied. “I don’t know why you thrill me like you do. You just do,” she sang to DeCrescent.

For an encore, DeCrescent did some of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

“He plays where I work,” the woman in black announced loudly. “Micheli’s in Hollywood. Great food.”

Ferris played more, then took time talk to me as I left.

He said he doesn’t know what he will do when Tail O’ the Cock closes next year.

It’s been his only job since Red Skelton retired, he said.

“I did the Red Skelton show for 30 years,” he said. I should have known.

After that, Ferris went to work at Tail O’ the Cock on La Cienega.

When that closed five years ago, he moved to Studio City.

“I really never have been out of a job,” he said.

Maybe Micheli’s in Hollywood could use him.