This Old House Born Again : USC Firm Restoring Victorian for Office Use
Motorists who saw that run-down Victorian resting on the traffic island at 23rd and Figueroa streets in November should be happy to know that it finally reached its destination at 1102 W. 28th St. and workers are breathing new life into it.
From a dilapidated rooming house headed toward demolition, at 629 W. 18th St., to a preserved architectural jewel, to be used as offices and, perhaps eventually, as a residence for a USC dean:
That’s what is happening to the Forthmann House, the Victorian motorists could see every day for a week as they drove north on Figueroa or the Harbor Freeway.
“We thought the move would take about three hours,” said Gerald M. Trimble, president of USC Real Estate Development Corp., which owns the Victorian with attorney/realtor Kristin Belko.
The three hours, starting at midnight on Nov. 22, stretched into a week when the moving company couldn’t get the house past some ornate street lamps, which extended farther into the street than anticipated. At first, the movers thought of removing a dormer to get the Victorian by the street lamps.
“They would have taken a chain saw to (it),” Trimble, who was there, recalled, “but it would have cost $15,000 or more to put the dormer back. It was only $3,000 to $4,000 to move the street lights.”
While they pondered this, another two houses were being moved down Adams Boulevard.
“We had a traffic jam at 2:30 a.m.!” Trimble said. “We were blocking the others, so we had to park our house.”
A week later, the Italianate-style Victorian moved on, to become the USC Real Estate Development Corp.’s first major project and its first of several with a private party as a partner.
Belko, a pioneer in preserving homes in the historic districts around the USC campus, is co-developer as well as co-owner of the Forthmann House, built in the 1880s for founders of the Los Angeles Soap Co., which shut down after 127 years in 1987.
“We’re working on a couple more partnerships like this, because it helps us leverage our finances to build housing in the area while creating a bridge (from USC) to the community,” Trimble explained.
Tax Credits
Future projects include new construction. “We ended up spending about $100,000 more than we would have if we had built three 1,200-square-foot units--or a total of 3,600 square feet, but in keeping with the historic district (where the Victorian was moved), we tried to do things right, to fit into the neighborhood,” he said, “and, hopefully, we will offset the $100,000 through tax credits and use of the house as an office.”
The USC Real Estate Development Corp., a wholly owned business subsidiary of USC, was incorporated in October, 1987, to develop property around USC’s campus to meet the needs of students, faculty and staff. In planning are a parking structure and a mixed-use project.
“And we’re looking at providing student as well as faculty housing,” Trimble said.
The need to provide faculty housing inspired creation of the corporation. Like other California universities, USC has trouble attracting out-of-state professors, who view housing prices here as too high to relocate, Trimble explained.
May Restore Others
The corporation purchased the Embassy Hotel at 9th Street and Grand Avenue and turned it into 375 units of student/faculty/staff housing, but the corporation is planning to build about 100 new town houses two blocks from campus, and may restore other historic houses, already in the USC neighborhood, for faculty use.
“We already bought one house, fixed it up and sold it to a Rhodes scholar who is an anthropologist,” he said.
The Forthmann House will be used by the corporation itself as a headquarters. As it is, Trimble’s staff operates out of two rooms, or about 900 square feet, in an old house at 734 W. Adams Blvd.
“We need an office building,” he said.
The 11-room Forthmann House--with 3,200 square feet, not including the 1,000-square-foot attic--is expected to serve that need by May or June.
Family Savings & Loan Assn., a minority lending institution in the Crenshaw area, is providing financing for the $400,000 project, which includes land and costs to relocate the 14 tenants who had been living in the Victorian before it was moved. Stefanos Polyzoides of de Bretteville & Polyzoides is the restoration architect.
“We’re putting on a new roof, and we’re painting and stripping with no irreversible changes so we can convert the house back to a residence for a dean in five to 10 years,” Trimble explained.
