ARCHITECTURE : Waterworks’ Civic Grandeur Now Dignifies Movie Academy

In 1927, Beverly Hills built a cathedral to celebrate its independence. The grand structure came complete with a nave, a bell tower, flying buttresses and an imposing presence that impressed all viewers with the power of this little community.

What made the structure even more remarkable was that the nave contained giant tanks of water that were held in place with the help of the flying buttresses, while the bell tower was a smokestack filling the air with sulfur.

In fact, no congregation ever sang hymns of praise within this church. It was the Beverly Hills Waterworks, a monument to the decision by this rich community to stay out of the embrace of Los Angeles and its Owens Valley water by buying and treating its very own life source.

Designed by the firm of Salisbury, Bradshaw & Taylor, the concrete structure sits on the corner of Olympic Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard, facing the street with massive walls forming simple shapes. The building never lets on what once went on inside. The whole process of aerating, filtering and piping the water was hidden in those naves and cross naves of this quasi-church, giving the aqueous processes a mysterious significance.

There isn’t actually much detail or direct reference on the building: the buttresses are plain, reinforced concrete beams, while scrolls at the base of the nave are indicated by a line cut into the concrete. The references are made, as in Union Station, through the massing of the building. The only fanciful piece of design is the smokestack, and there things become fairly confused; the concrete shaft rises up to a series of blank screens that place Gothic and classical layers below a crown reminiscent of a New England church. Seen together with the red tile roof and massive walls that recall mission churches, the architecture does no more than indicate a kind of nondenominational and timeless significance thrown over a massive amount of plumbing.

Today the plumbing is all gone, replaced by the archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Study of the Oscars and all that goes into getting them is pursued below the arched forms of the cross nave, now cleaned up and filled with elegant cabinets. What was once a garage is now storage space, and the water tanks now hold the climate-controlled stacks. This is a reuse that is well suited to the original architecture, because the civic scale and simple spaces of the waterworks provide a sense of dignity to the semi-public functions of this prestigious research institution, while the massive walls help keep the climate right.

On the outside, a new wing has been added to the back, the building has been painted an unfortunately noncommittal yellow, with trendy greenish trims around the windows, and the giant outside storage tanks have been replaced by elaborately landscaped playgrounds and parking lots. A pergola has been clamped on the back to give the building a base now that it no longer rises from a field of water. A separate tennis center, meant to be evocative of the original architecture, but looking instead as if the architects ran out of both money and ideas, cowers next to the new archives.

The renovation on the whole is respectful and intelligent, though very much of its time.

One suspects that the waterworks could be renovated again, 10 years from now, in what will then be the latest fashion, although the strong simplicity of the original cathedral will remain mute and dignified, signifying the importance of Beverly Hills. Whether it is water or films, this old building celebrates it with a kind of stripped-down grandeur unseen in today’s civic architecture.