Demolition Is Stopped on Historic McKinley House

The Italian Renaissance-styled McKinley Mansion, which is on Los Angeles’ official list of historic-cultural monuments, was saved from the wrecker’s ball over the weekend after a city building inspector arrived on the scene and declared that a demolition permit had been issued by mistake.

Contractors hired by owner Jason Lee had been at work an hour or more and did what could be thousands of dollars in damage before building inspector Michael D. Tharpe ordered them to stop demolishing the $4.5-million property at 301 S. Lafayette Park Place on Saturday morning.

By the time neighbors’ complaints and police inquiries had brought out the building inspector, the wreckers had smashed the front patio superstructure, wrecked the adjacent arbors and made a number of gashes in the main part of the house, including exposing the wood frame on the southwest corner.

Lee said Sunday that his contractors had obtained the demolition permit from the city Friday afternoon, and he believed that he was fully authorized to destroy the 13,000-square-foot house, built in 1917 and named for the late mortuary operator, Maytor H. McKinley. Lee wants to remove the house to make way for a 140-unit apartment house.

However, an official of the Los Angeles Conservancy, Christy McAvoy, said a demolition permit cannot legitimately be issued, pending completion of an environmental impact report and exploration of alternative uses for the property.

“The owners were aware of that, but they evidently took advantage of the situation in the city offices on the eve of a holiday,” she said. “The permits division may have been shorthanded. These properties are supposed to be clearly flagged in the city’s files, however, so I really don’t know how they got the permit.

“I’m very saddened by the owners’ action. We had a substantial communication with them, and the situation had been fully explained to them. I’m deeply disappointed that they chose to do this.”

Lee, who said he has owned the property for about seven months, said he had grown tired of waiting for the city to act and told his contractors this fall to see what they could do about getting a demolition permit.

He said that the city’s building inspector had told him he was stopping the demolition only until Tuesday, when the city would decide what to do next.

Lee showed the permit his contractors had obtained to a reporter Sunday. He also displayed a city report saying that the Cultural Heritage Board had lifted a 180-day stay on issuing a demolition permit last March and said he knew nothing about any requirement for an environmental impact report.

Present at the house Sunday was another man, Rod Daniels, a San Fernando Valley developer who said he has been seeking permission to move the house to Chatsworth and that he would like to live in it. It has also been proposed that the house be left where it is and used as an AIDS hospice.