Fixing History : Unusual Mix of People Rally to Preserve 2 Redondo Beach Homes

The paint is peeling. The porches droop. Even their biggest advocate says they’re “ratty.” Parked in a poplar grove in Redondo Beach, the two old houses are so forlorn that to many they seemed landmarks only an architectural scholar could love.

But love works in strange and manifold ways, the South Bay’s oldest city is discovering. Since last year, when the sites of the vintage homes were earmarked for condominiums, their planned restoration has drawn an unexpected flood of volunteers--ranging from bikers to Girl Scouts to Bhagavan Sri Babajhan Al-Kahlil The Friend, a 46-year-old yogi from Lomita.

“They’re literally coming out of the woodwork,” marveled Jonathan Eubanks, president of the Redondo Beach Historical Society.

In a place where soaring property values have for years meant the demise of historic homes, such grass-roots rediscoveries of the past are gaining popularity. Like many cities where dizzying growth has placed a premium on development, Redondo Beach is acquiring a renewed appreciation of its heritage, preservationists say.

In the last three years, homeowners in Redondo Beach have gotten one entire neighborhood--the 300 block of North Gertruda Avenue--into the National Register of Historic Places. Another, the 500 block of Garnet Street, is seeking city designation as a local historic district. And this summer, after a five-year battle, the City Council created a new Preservation Commission to oversee the fate of the city’s dwindling stock of older buildings.

To Eubanks, the new interest in restoration and the outpouring of volunteers to work on the two vintage homes has been a relief. Their restoration is expected to cost up to $350,000, and the Historical Society, which has promised to carry it out, has less than $30,000.

Redondo Beach is not the only place where some people are concerned about “merging into the megalopolis with no local character left at all,” said Jay Rounds, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy. In recent years, he said, Long Beach and Riverside have created positions for city preservation officers and West Hollywood has passed a “very advanced, very strong” historic resources ordinance.

In each case, he said, the move follows a building boom of the sort that in Redondo Beach, has obliterated countless old bungalows, theaters and other landmarks.

“We lost our whole downtown to urban renewal in the 1950s and early 1960s,” Eubanks said. “For years, Redondo Beach has been so developed in so many ways. Now people are saying, ‘Wait a minute--where did my community go?’ ”

For Eubanks, that question today focuses on these two turn-of-the-century houses transplanted to the city’s Dominguez Park. The clapboard homes came to the city’s attention last year because one, the Morrell House, was standing in the way of development.

High on a hill at 204 N. Catalina Ave., with a big wraparound porch overlooking the harbor, the house had been built by J. Edward Morrell, one of the 97-year-old city’s first construction magnates. With Queen Anne style and Craftsman detailing, it is among the city’s oldest homes and continued to color local lore long after the Morrell family moved on to Santa Barbara in 1956.

For 14 years, an ancient form of yoga was taught there by Bhagavan Sri Babajhan Al-Kahlil The Friend, known as Bhagavan for short. One bedroom doubled as a meditation and lecture room; yogic symbols decorated the venerable walls. Skunks and opossums wandered in through the cat door and meandered out again. So did the occasional ghost, Bhagavan said.

The group was evicted in 1984 after the property changed hands. For about a year, the house sat vacant, at the mercy of vandals. By the time Terry Ison, the next--and last--tenant moved in, the walls were a clutter of rainbow-and-unicorn decals vying for space with punk graffiti. The carpeting was ripped, the screen doors were gone and the big porch railing was so rotten that eventually, Ison’s friends used pieces of it for firewood.

With Ison came two roommates, a constant stream of friends and a fleet of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, one of which was built from scratch on the second floor. The Morrell House’s last days on Catalina Avenue were peopled, Ison said, with former Hells Angels, ex-members of the Crucifiers gang and other motorcycle enthusiasts.

In 1988, property owner Simon Chang decided he wanted condominiums there. Lobbied by the Historical Society, the City Council voted to move the house to a park where it would create a living museum of local buildings that would be preserved for their historical significance.

Such a relocation strategy is not uncommon in cities under economic pressure to develop, said John Merritt, executive director of the California Preservation Foundation.

“It’s not the desired solution, but it happens in areas where you have enormous growth,” Merritt said. Twenty years ago, he said, a similar development climate in Los Angeles led to the creation of Heritage Square, a collection of Victorian buildings relocated to a 10-acre park just off the Pasadena (110) Freeway.

Ideally, he said, the preference now is to relocate older houses, when necessary, to neighborhoods rather than open space to avoid “making them isolated bits of time.”

But in Redondo Beach, very few neighborhoods can boast a vacant lot, and the city had trouble even securing a park. It was not until the Morrell House was three days from demolition that the city hastily selected Perry Allison Playfield on the city’s north side as its new home. The move so outraged the play field neighborhood that the house almost immediately had to be moved again.

Now it sits on cribbing at Dominguez Park, along with a modest Victorian cottage, also of the Queen Anne style, that also was forced out by condominium development. The city has spent more than $300,000 to move and landscape the homes. But officials worry that the Historical Society won’t be able to keep its pledge to restore them for up to $350,000.

“That’s a lot of money for a nonprofit corporation that produces most of its money from bake sales and the like,” said City Manager Tim Casey.

But Eubanks, who admits the houses are “pretty ratty,” says the work can be stretched over several years’ worth of fund-raisers.

Besides, there are the volunteers. Velma Morrell, now 83 and living in Santa Barbara, has pledged money for building supplies, Eubanks said. The Bhagavan has offered his services as a handyman. Janet Graves, 31, of Torrance, a Morrell House regular when Ison was living there, has offered to scrape paint, hammer nails and do whatever else is necessary to “bring it back to the way it was.” Greg Cox, who led the protest at Perry Allison Playfield, nonetheless has donated a wheelchair lift.

Eubanks sees more in the outpouring of support than the popularity of an old house. The volunteers--150 so far--include everyone from housewives to engineers to King Harbor Neighborhood Girl Scout Troop No. 1344, whose leader is Linda Rummler.

The desire to get her troop involved in volunteer service was only part of the reason she signed up, Rummler said. The other part was that “people are getting sick and tired of these condos overloading our community.”