Old Police Building Becoming Co-Ops
The historic police headquarters building at 240 Centre St. in Lower Manhattan is being turned into co-ops, and movie producer Daniel Melnick is the first in line to buy.
“When Arthur (Emil, the developer) told me he bought the building and was converting it, I said, ‘I must have the radio room,’ ” Melnick said last week--which was, coincidentally, National Preservation Week--by phone from his Burbank offices.
Melnick is working feverishly to finish “Roxanne,” starring Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah and Shelley Duvall for its July 4 opening.
Melnick--who also produced “Footloose,” “All That Jazz” and other films--first saw the radio room, which will be part of his apartment, when he was filming the ‘60s TV series “NYPD.”
“We filmed there with the cooperation of the New York City Police Department, and I got to know the building quite well. The radio room is so dramatic--perfectly round--with a dome that is a skylight.”
A round room for a round bed? Nope, the room will be turned into a sitting/living room, and he will have a bedroom that is trapezoidal in shape. “Lydia (dePolo) is designing the furniture for me. She did a great job on a house for me in Sundance, Utah,” he said.
A team that includes dePolo/Dunbar Inc. is working on restoring the police building, a city and national landmark, for Fourth Jeffersonian Associates.
Designed by New York architects Hoppin & Koen, the Edwardian Baroque Beaux-Arts-style building was modeled on London’s Old Bailey courthouse. It functioned as headquarters for New York City’s police force from the time it was built in 1909 until 1973.
When the $30-million restoration is completed, sometime in 1988, the building will have 55 co-op apartments, one with a window 18 feet high, another with three levels and a private elevator. Prices: from $295,000 to $1.47 million. Melnick is reportedly paying just under $1 million.
If you drive down Main Street in the heart of L. A.’s Skid Row, you might do a double take, because art restorer Ron Reed has been applying his techniques with the help of the W. A. Carroll Co. (paint contractor) to the Victorian-style San Fernando Building at 4th Street, and the contrast with the drabness of nearby buildings is remarkable.
“I collected over 60 paint specimens and have documented nine colors that were originally used to ornament the facade,” Reed said. Terra cotta, gray, tan, olive, cream, buff and red-brown are just some of the hues that are being used to bring the 1907 office building back to life. It is one of the first poured-in-place concrete buildings in Los Angeles and the only polychromatic Victorian Reed knows of south of San Francisco.
Storefront improvements are expected to be made in the next couple of months, and public spaces are expected to be completed in August.
Kerrigan Lynch & Associates is restoring the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, with the help of the Community Redevelopment Agency. An estimated $2.5 million has been committed for the project.
It won’t be in time for National Preservation Week, which ends today, but a big day is planned May 31 for the “Venice Art Walk” to benefit the Venice Family Clinic, which has such luminaries on its board of directors as Tony Bill, Dudley Moore and Leonard Nimoy.
Besides a historical tour of Venice, there will be tours of artists’ studios and homes, a silent art auction and a dinner--”A Night of Comedy,” honoring Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams at Filmland Center, that dazzling new office building across from Lorimar Studios (the former MGM lot) in Culver City. Tickets start at $35 for the art walk. Details are available from the clinic, 392-8630.
Actor Errol Flynn slept here. So did rock star/actor Ricky Nelson. And singer-songwriter Stuart Hamblen.
They all owned a certain Mulholland Drive mansion, at various times, but it’s known as the Errol Flynn Estate because it was designed and built by him in the ‘40s and became, while Flynn lived there, what has been described in print several times as a famous “fortress of bacchanalian amusements.”
In some of his memoirs, Flynn--who died in 1959--described the hilarious parties he had at the rambling Connecticut-style farmhouse, which now sits on 2.96 acres (it was originally on seven acres) with a swimming pool, barbecue area, patio and tennis court. He also wrote:
“She went up fast, like the sails of a boat. At the outset, she only cost me $35,000. Later, as I extended her and improved her, the total cost went to $125,000.”
It was for sale until recently through Micheline Swift and Craig Blanchard at Ron Abrams Realtors in Beverly Hills, for $1,395,000, but is in escrow. “What’s nice is that the buyer does not plan to tear it down,” Swift said.
In the not-so-nice category: Ken Schessler, author of “This Is Hollywood,” wrote that there was a one-way mirror in the ceiling of a bedroom so that Flynn and his friends could observe famous house guests making love. Said Swift: “We hunted for that mirror and, yes, it’s there.”
In another kind of reflection . . . Beverly Hills real estate broker Mike Silverman recalled last week how his experiences with wild animals have given him something in common with such animal enthusiasts as actor Lorne Greene and the late actor William Holden.
On a photo safari in southern Nepal, Silverman was riding an elephant in a monsoon when the elephant slipped while crossing a river. The elephant and its rider were swept downstream, but Silverman survived to tell about it to Holden, who then asked Silverman to represent some of his real estate in Palm Springs.
Holden also made Silverman an honorary member of the Mt. Kenya Safari Club on one of Silverman’s many trips to Africa.
Silverman sold a Mandeville Canyon estate to Green.
