Pumping Up History : Brentwood Gas Station Declared a Landmark, Protected from Demolition

For the first time in Los Angeles, you can visit a local cultural historic monument and get your gas tank filled and your tire pressure checked at the same time.

With its brick columns, red-tile roof and 40-foot tower, the Chevron station at Barrington Avenue and Sunset Boulevard has been a Brentwood landmark and gathering place since it was built in 1938. Now it is a historic monument, as well.

When word spread that the property’s new owner was planning to tear the building down in favor of a mini-mall, many Brentwood residents were appalled, said architect William Krisel.

First Gas Station

Krisel and other concerned Brentwood residents decided the best way to protect the building, at least for the next year, was to have it declared a cultural historic monument.

Last week, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission granted Krisel’s request because of the building’s role as a community focal point and because of its Spanish Colonial-style architecture, said Commission President Amarjit S. Marwah.

It is the first gas station in the city to earn such a distinction, Marwah said. “It is the only Spanish Colonial gas station that I’m aware of in the city,” he said. “It has some very distinctive architectural features.”

The building’s most distinctive feature is its 40-foot tower, which houses a 20- by 20-foot room rented in the 1950s and 1960s by writers who liked its solitude and large windows.

In the tower, now used to store paperwork and tires, screenwriter James Poe wrote “Lilies of the Field,” “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and the screen adaptation of “Around the World in 80 Days” for which he shared an Oscar in 1956.

Following Poe as the tower tenant was writer Norman Katkov, who described the room as “the best place to work I ever had in a half-century of professional writing.”

It was there, said Katkov in a letter read to the commission, that he wrote a novel, “Eric Mattson,” and scripts for such television shows as “The Untouchables” and “Ben Casey.”

But the building’s owner, Dick Leavitt, is fighting the historical designation. The building, designed by architect Raymond A. Stockdale, has been altered over the years and is a poor example of Spanish Colonial-style architecture, he said.

As for its significance as a writer’s workplace, the building is just one of thousands in Los Angeles in which writers, many of them more notable than Poe and Katkov, have worked, he said.

“Is it appropriate to declare a property a historical monument because someone who worked there won one-third of an Oscar for adapting a story into a screenplay?” Leavitt asked.

Protection from Demolition

Commission staff architect Jay Oren, however, told the commission that the changes to the structure were minor and that in “form, scale and proportion,” the building is much the same as it was in 1938.

Despite Leavitt’s protest, the three-member commission voted unanimously to declare the Brentwood Chevron station a cultural historic monument.

Such a designation, after final approval by the City Council, will protect the building from demolition for one year--giving the residents and interested groups, such as the Los Angeles Conservancy, time to find a new buyer for the property or to work out an agreement with Leavitt.

The vote pleased Krisel.

“Among architects, there is the feeling that the past should be preserved, that there is too much demolition and substitution with ugly buildings,” Krisel said. “Preserving the character of the neighborhood seems to be what is the most important to residents who have lived there for any length of time.”

Leavitt, a Brentwood resident, said he will try to develop the site for a commercial use. He said he plans to meet with local homeowners to come up with a plan that satisfies everyone. Meanwhile, the building will continue operating as a gas station.

“We’re going to try to help the neighborhood,” he said. “We’re going to have (a project that is) nice, something cleaner than a gas station.”