House Keeper : History: Woodland Hills woman battles to save one of the community’s oldest homes and hold city bulldozers at bay.

Alison Siewert simply could not bear to see the white-and-green cottage on Saltillo Street in Woodland Hills chewed up by bulldozers.

Condemned to demolition by the Los Angeles City Council, the ramshackle house is considered a nuisance by its neighbors, a piece of history by Siewert. So she launched a campaign the save the house, one of the oldest in the hillside community.

She pored over property records and determined that the tiny house was built in 1925 by the original developer of Woodland Hills, Victor Girard. Then she tracked down the Los Angeles woman who owns the house and persuaded her to renovate it.

And now she has persuaded the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission to consider preserving the house as a historical landmark, an action that could block the council’s demolition order.

“I’ve been in love with this house for a long time,” said Siewert, 26, who grew up in Woodland Hills. “I’m, like, obsessed with it.”

But Siewert’s obsession has irked the office of Councilman Marvin Braude, who in April introduced the City Council motion to tear down the house. Braude introduced the measure because some neighbors had complained that rowdy teen-agers hang out there.

“It’s the biggest mess you ever saw,” said Judith Hirshberg, Braude’s field deputy.

Unoccupied since 1988, the house has attracted vandals and, neighbors say, gang members. They say nights in the otherwise quiet residential neighborhood are punctuated with loud music and the jangle of breaking glass.

Moreover, the two-bedroom house has fallen into disrepair. Its interior walls are scarred with graffiti and weeds choke the yard. The floors and walls have boards missing and those windows that have not been boarded up have been smashed.

The council voted in April to order Alberta Bass to renovate the house or demolish it. If she did not comply, the city would tear down the house and send Bass the bill, with a 40% administrative fee tacked on.

But Siewert and others argued that instead of being destroyed, the house should be preserved because of its design and because it was built by Girard.

Girard’s Boulevard Land Co. built dozens of tiny bungalows between 1923 and 1928 as weekend retreats for harried city dwellers. Some of Girard’s smaller mountain lots sold for $500 and came with a membership in the golf club Girard built.

Girard’s company was wiped out in 1931 by a flurry of lawsuits filed by buyers of home sites who claimed they had been lied to and cheated. Girard died in 1954 at age 74, but dozens of his Hansel-and-Gretel-style cabins remained.

Bass, who bought the house in 1960 and lived in it until the mid-1970s, said she already has hired a contractor and an architect to bring the house up to city standards so she can move in. The house fell into disrepair, Bass said, because she could not find a contractor to renovate the property or a bank willing to loan her the money.

She said she found both about the time Braude’s motion was approved. Although Bass became frustrated, Siewert helped convince her the house was worth saving.

Bass, 73, appealed the demolition order and a hearing has been scheduled for next Tuesday. The Cultural Heritage Commission will consider Siewert’s request for the historical designation the next day.

But even if the commission moves to protect the house, Braude’s chief deputy, Cindy Miscikowski, said her office will oppose the designation when it comes before the City Council. She charged that the claim of historical significance is nothing more than a stalling tactic and that Bass has refused to maintain the property in the past.

“We haven’t seen any evidence that there has been any sincere effort to correct the things that need correcting,” Miscikowski said. “This is just a last-ditch effort to get out of what the city wants her to do.”