The Petrification of Preservation

The brooding Ennis-Brown House rising out of a cliff above Los Feliz is one of the more dramatic and important architectural landmarks in Los Angeles, the last and most ambitious of Frank Lloyd Wright’s experimental mock Mesoamerican block structures.

That its owner, the nonprofit Trust for Preservation of Cultural Heritage, has to consider stripping the singular structure of artwork to generate funds for desperately needed repairs is a sad commentary on the growing petrification of the preservation bureaucracy today.

The directors of the trust recognize well that the artwork, in particular the exquisitely designed doors, windows and light fixtures, are an integral part of the architectural experience of the house.

But they also recognize that the house also is a work of art, and it is crumbling.

For nearly a decade the trust has been struggling to find a way for the house to be properly restored and maintained, be it by generating funds through tours and rentals, and obtaining loans and grants from private foundations and private agencies.

There also have been a few attempts to sell or donate the house to a more financially secure institution.

Particularly frustrating to the board has been the latest round of appeals to the state Office of Historic Preservation, the Getty Grant Program and National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The appeals have involved the submission of reams of applications weighted down with required documentation, requests for more documentation, extended reviews, numerous meetings and extended negotiations, ending with polite rejections, or suggestions on how to resubmit and start the process over.

Protected process might be grist for the “professional” preservationists building a record or a bureaucracy, while perfecting an application form. But it has sapped the spirit and the good will and works of the trust and the landmark’s curator and former owner, August Brown. Although they have extensive experience, they are not considered “professionals,” drawing no salaries while volunteering their time.

Indeed, in the seemingly endless reviews, it has been made quite clear that the appeals by the trust would be viewed much more favorably if it would retain a “professional” preservationist who could better communicate with the various concerned agencies and foundations.

(The manipulation of grant proposal has become an art form, worthy in itself of postgraduate study.)

These comments have prompted Brown to volunteer to step aside, if funds for repairs are forthcoming. His statement and the trust’s announcement last week concerning the artwork have sent a needed shock wave through the preservation movement.

The preservation movement, until relatively recently a very community-inspired movement, for all its good intentions, appears of late to be petrifying into yet another self-serving network. It is a climate in which paper work and presentations become more important than actual projects.

The movement needs to put personalities, and bureaucracies, aside, stop its turf wars and reaffirm its allegiance to the preservation of architectural and cultural landmarks. The Ennis-Brown House would be a good place to start.

BRIEFLY NOTED: Worth a detour is the new Ramada complex on Santa Monica Boulevard near La Cienega Boulevard, which in replacing the rock star-haunted Tropicana Motel hints at a new urban design consciousness for a maturing West Hollywood.

The complex, designed by the firm of Oved/Zimmerman Architects, combines a subdued 180- room hotel with a host of engaging shops and restaurants, and 28 needed apartments, in a bright, pedestrian-friendly design that relates well to the boulevard.

Helping is a landscaped courtyard featuring the distinctive creations of artist Peter Shire. The total is a welcomed urbanity.

Urbanity very much marks the proposal to redevelop the Craft and Folk Art Museum in combination with a 21-story condominium project on Wilshire Boulevard across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the George C. Page Museum.

Tentative plans by UCLA’s Urban Innovations Group in association with the architecture firms of Gensler and McGee and associates call for a 55,000-square-foot museum, and space for offices, shops and parking, topped with 66 apartments.

The package, for which UCLA Dean Richard Weinstein is the principal designer, is being developed by the Ratkovich Co., in partnership with the museum board headed by Frank Wyle.

The concept of mixed use makes great sense, generating maximum use of a valuable site to benefit a gem of a museum whose imaginative programs to date have been hampered by an awkward, makeshift facility.

The hope is that in the refinement of the architectural plans the museum’s needs and identity are not sacrificed for commercial considerations or swallowed up in a painful learning experience for those involved, however well intentioned.

Such mixed-use projects do generate problems, and challenges.

There has been a surfeit of award programs of late.

In one recent week both the second annual Oranges & Lemons Award--sponsored by a coalition of local planning, architecture, interior design and landscape associations--and the now-perennial Roses and Lemon Awards--sponsored by the Downtown Breakfast Club--were given.

The result was a harvest that included a lemon from the club for the Gateway Competition, and lemons from the coalition for Pershing Square, the Park Del Amo development in Torrance, the Ibis Hotel in Carson, the Ma Maison Sofityel hotel adjacent to West Hollywood, the sky lobby of the Home Savings Tower and the destruction of the Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills. There also was a crush of oranges and roses.