Mixed Ambience : Victorian Bed-and-Breakfast Stands Out Amid City Squalor

There’s the sunny side of the street. And then there’s the other.

One side has the turn-of-the-century elegance of old money--comfortable antique brass beds, plush red-velvet Victorian settees, an oak-paneled library illuminated by graceful stained-glass windows, old-fashioned cast-iron bathtubs that invite a relaxing soak.

The other side has the jarring reality of the new Los Angeles--a tiny park whose benches are sometimes inhabited by sleeping drunks, ornate street lamps smashed to darkness by drug dealers, curbs overflowing with trash or with discarded police barricades that warn that the neighborhood is a narcotics-enforcement zone and that outsiders are unwelcome.

That is the way it is along Alvarado Terrace, a short street in the Pico-Union district just west of downtown Los Angeles. It’s the last place in town where most tourists would expect to find a quaint bed-and-breakfast inn.

“You think of bed-and-breakfasts and you think of places on the Central Coast with a view of the ocean. Or in the wine country, where there’s a view of the grapes,” said Rhonda Herb of Fresno. “Here, you have a view of that park at night.”

Herb and her husband, Dave, were among three couples who checked into the Terrace Manor bed-and-breakfast inn one recent weekend for an end-of-summer vacation getaway.

Instead of pounding surf, they fell asleep to the muted whup-whup-whup of a police helicopter flying overhead. Rather than the rustle of a vineyard breeze, there was the distant wail of sirens.

Despite Los Angeles’ $2-billion summer tourism industry, the city boasts only five bed-and-breakfast inns. None of the guest houses are more surprising than Terrace Manor.

It occupies a home built in 1902 by glass factory owner Robert Raphael. The estate was among six mansions that formed what is said to be Los Angeles’ first subdivision for the wealthy.

The two-story Tudor-style residence was owned in the 1930s by Los Angeles Mayor John Porter. Its fourth owners were living there in 1971 when the street’s six houses were designated city cultural monuments.

The mansion’s fifth owners are Shirley and Sandy Spillman, who spent $400,000 purchasing it and converting it into a bed-and-breakfast inn in 1984. Sandy Spillman is a professional magician and entertainer who is the former manager of the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood.

These days, Terrace Manor is more of a standout than ever. That is because Pico-Union--six blocks south of drug-plagued MacArthur Park--has earned the reputation as one of the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Spray-painted gang slogans cover the brick walls of an abandoned storefront at the end of Alvarado Terrace. Graffiti obscures signs that identify the street as a cultural monument. One of the vandalized signs dangles upside down on its post.

Discarded mattresses and broken furniture litter sidewalks on adjoining side streets. Hulks of automobiles are sometimes left stripped in the street in front of tiny Terrace Park, across from the mansions. Crack users huddle in doorways along nearby Pico Boulevard.

“When we drove over here, I looked around and thought, ‘Oh my lord, where are we going to be?’ ” said inn guest Lyn Martin of Portland, Ore., who visited with her husband, James. “But once the gate was open and we came in, it was like another world.”

Bed-and-breakfast guests receive their own key to the inn, along with a remote-control device that opens and closes the gate to an enclosed parking lot behind it. The Spillmans warn them that the neighborhood is like many others in the city: one that deserves caution.

“It’s intimidating when you drive in this area,” said guest Chris Patrick of Vancouver, Canada. “You think, ‘Golly, if I turn the wrong way, I’ll end up where I don’t want to be.’ ”

Patrick said he and his wife, Josie Chuback, were apprehensive when they returned to the inn early Saturday after spending a Friday evening on the town.

“We couldn’t find the alley you turn into to park, so we were driving around looking for it,” he said. “Guys were standing around street corners at 2 in the morning watching us. We did six U-turns at 30 m.p.h. I said, ‘I’m getting out of here.’ ”

But the area is fascinating, Patrick said. “It’s very strange for us to see a house like this in a neighborhood like this. You wonder: How does an area go from elite to not so elite?”

Guest Dave Herb, who works as a Fresno city planner, applauded the effort to preserve older homes and neighborhoods. He said he and his wife seek out bed-and-breakfast inns when they travel because they find them less stressful and more interesting than hotels.

All three couples praised the tranquillity inside Terrace Manor and said they would return. Inn operator Shirley Spillman said 30% of her guests are repeat visitors.

Most travelers do not associate Los Angeles’ urban setting with the quaint image that bed-and-breakfasts usually carry, Spillman said.

“B&Bs; still haven’t taken off in L.A.,” she said. “People think they have to be in old houses and that we don’t have any old houses here. They think of L.A. as being all tinsel.”

This year, many travelers have also come to think of Los Angeles as being overrun by crime, she said. News reports in the past year of drive-by shootings and other gang activity contributed to a noticeable drop in tourism this summer at large hotels, tourism officials say. And at Terrace Manor.

About 80 couples a month stay at the inn’s five individually decorated bedrooms, which rent for $70 to $100 a night and include breakfast the next morning. The occupancy rate is down about 5% from last year--”which is a lot when you’re talking about five rooms,” Spillman said.

“Twenty percent of our callers ask if this is a safe place to visit. I tell them it’s as safe as any place else in L.A. I’m honest: Graffiti . . . police helicopters--they’re part of L.A.”

But so is her old house, Spillman said.

Its elegance and craftsmanship have not changed. A group of area residents and merchants have joined City Councilwoman Gloria Molina in forming a new association that is trying to clean up the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Terrace Manor will remain the oasis that it has become, Spillman said.

“Knock on wood,” she added, rapping her knuckles on highly polished tiger-oak paneling in the mansion’s doorway.