BUILDING WATCH : Academy Award

Angelenos have long been ambivalent about their architectural inheritance, unsure about which of the area’s graceful or whimsical structures to preserve and which to sweep aside: One man’s 1950’s-era car wash can be another man’s irreplaceable architectural jewel.

But while we’ve bickered, Los Angeles’ special buildings have vanished. The Pan Pacific Auditorium, a stunning example of the 1930’s Streamline Moderne style, was gutted in a 1989 fire while bureaucrats deadlocked over its future. Hollywood’s Garden Court Apartments, once home to movie stars and moguls, were bulldozed in 1984 after years of neglect.

So it is no small accomplishment that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the city of Beverly Hills celebrate this week as they reopen the historic Beverly Hills Waterworks as the new site for the academy’s Center for Motion Picture Study.

Built in 1927 as a water treatment plant for the young city of Beverly Hills, the distinctive Spanish Revival-style building was a decaying magnet for vandals by the mid-1970s. City officials had slated it for demolition but local preservationists convinced the city that the building, with its magnificent rosette window and Moorish tower, still had life left.

The academy, in search of a home for its huge film collection, restored the building, while the city improved the surrounding public parkland. The result: a win-win situation for the public and the academy and, one hopes, a model of cooperation for future preservation efforts.