COLUMN ONE : New Lives for Aging Beauties? : Elegant buildings that once housed landmark department stores often face uncertain fates. Despite efforts to preserve their soul, some end up as office complexes or forlorn hulks.

Chiseled in stone over the stately Wilshire Boulevard entrance, the motto of the Bullocks Wilshire department store proclaims: “To Build a Business That Will Never Know Completion.” Such jazz age optimism is painfully ironic as real estate agents and preservationists try to breathe life back into the Art Deco beauty suffering the indignity of boarded-up windows and doors.

“Nothing has galvanized the imagination of our members as much as this building,” said Amy Forbes, president of the Los Angeles Conservancy, which is devoted to Southern California’s architectural heritage. The 1929 landmark, closed since April, seems safe from demolition but not from decay or, Forbes fears, from a tenant who may care little about its striking murals and glowing marble halls.

Anxiety was heightened this week by an on-site liquidation sale of many fixtures, racks and furniture. In addition, some original chandeliers were moved out of the store, sparking a dispute over murky city landmark laws.

Although the fact does not comfort worried fans of Bullocks Wilshire, the building’s uncertain fate is not unique.

Across California and the nation, consolidations in the retail industry have left grand dame department stores empty hulks, ghostly reminders that they once anchored entire neighborhoods and were central to cities’ very identities. As a result, from Mid-Wilshire in Los Angeles to 5th Avenue in Manhattan, efforts are under way to find new uses for these gigantic structures that usually date to an era when the word mall suggested only a shaded walkway.

A much-anticipated announcement about a new occupant for Bullocks Wilshire is expected soon. The most persistent speculation around City Hall and architecture circles is that the Southwestern University School of Law library will be moving in.

Meanwhile, the May Co. store at Wilshire and Fairfax Avenue, which closed last year, is scheduled to become part of a retail-office complex, possibly including museum space. The plan is to save much of the exterior, including its signature gold tower, but to radically alter the interior. Just across Wilshire, the long-shuttered Ohrbach’s will be home to an automobile museum by next year--a joint effort of the Petersen auto magazine chain and the county Museum of Natural History.

In New York, part of the enormous Altman’s store on 5th Avenue is being made into a science and business library, while the rest may be used for a home decorating center. The nearby Gimbel’s has been carved into a suburban-style mall. In Washington, 385 luxury condominium apartments fill the former Landsburgh store. In Portland, Ore., and Philadelphia, once-vacant stores contain offices and boutiques. One in Denver combines those with apartments, too.

America’s urban landscape is also dotted with closed department stores that never found a second life. The Robinson’s on 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, the Garfinkel’s close to the White House in Washington, the Alexander’s store on New York’s Upper Eastside, are just a few of the empty shells.

“I bet you darn near every city of any size has an abandoned department store,” said professor Larry Gresham at Texas A & M University’s Center for Retailing Studies. “Downtown department stores pretty much have become dinosaurs,” he added, attributing their decline to competition from suburban malls, shoppers’ fears about central city crime and the collapse of some overly ambitious corporate takeovers.

Such circumstances were unthinkable 30 years ago when nearly every good-size city had at least one department store and often several. Chains considered downtown stores their flagships, decorating them with corporate pride and offering the choicest merchandise and services there. Shopping was an event, not just consumerism.

“They are truly landmarks, reference points in the cities,” said architect Sam Harris, who helped with a department store conversion in Philadelphia. “So people still have a very strong attachment.”

Vacant department stores, by their very size, can badly harm surrounding neighborhoods. Architectural historian Emily Eig, who worked on a potential rehabilitation of a Washington store, described “a vacuum effect” as energy, money and people disappear from a once-lively street. “It is incredibly depressing what happens when these buildings are left to sit,” she said.

Bullocks Wilshire will not remain empty for long, insisted Lawrence A. Fischer, managing director at the CB Commercial real estate group, which is handling negotiations for R. H. Macy & Co., the bankrupt leaseholder. Fischer declined to identify interested parties, other than to confirm that Southwestern University School of Law, around the corner from the store, has offered to lease the building for a library and offices. An art gallery and retailers also have come forward, but no high-end department stores, he added.

Southwestern spokeswoman Leslie Steinberg said the school would do its best to preserve the store’s decor if the library plan is approved. “We’ve always admired the building and it would add tremendously to our culture,” she said. Former Mayor Tom Bradley, a Southwestern alumnus, has pushed for that deal.

Everyone involved seems aware of the emotional and political pressures to find a tenant who will care for the store. Beyond architectural beauty, Bullocks Wilshire is seen as an important symbol for the troubled Mid-Wilshire district, which is suffering through a plague of vacancies and the disruptive construction of the Red Line subway.

“There is a sentimental value here,” Fischer said. “Most of the movers and shakers still involved in L.A. politics probably shopped there at one time or another. So they have more than a passing interest in this building.”

Moreover, bringing life to the property is important to efforts to restore Los Angeles after last year’s riot. Once the epitome of West Coast gentility, the store was looted of merchandise reportedly worth several million dollars, although it escaped permanent damage to its structure. Store officials contended that those losses hastened its closure after years of losing business to Westside and suburban malls. Critics said Macy’s unwise nationwide corporate management was the real killer.

Louis White, chief deputy to Councilman Nate Holden, who represents the area, said he hopes potential tenants anticipate a neighborhood renaissance after the subway station opens near Bullocks Wilshire in three years. Holden, he said, wants another department store to take over but will not protest if the law library moves in. “The one thing we want to make sure won’t happen is that it becomes a swap meet,” White said.

The financial situation is complicated. The California Institute of Technology has owned the property since 1942 in a lucrative lease-back arrangement. But Caltech has no control over the building under the lease, according to a school spokesman. Instead, he said, the New York court overseeing last year’s bankruptcy filing by the Macy company probably will have final word. Bullocks Wilshire became part of Macy’s I. Magnin chain in 1988 and the Macy lease can extend until 2032.

The asking price for the remainder of the lease is $5 million upfront, Fischer said. In his dream scenario, a museum or wealthy art patron would step forward to lease the building at less than the cost of one Van Gogh painting.

“Here you can have a 215,000-square-foot piece of art,” he mused.

With merchandise moved out months ago, workers recently took down fixtures, some for the current liquidation sale, and some for other Macy-owned stores. The Los Angeles Conservancy contends that the removal of some original chandeliers and sconces from second-floor salons breaks an agreement with the company and possibly violates city landmark law. Caltech has also protested.

Rodney Punt, assistant general manager of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, has requested that the chandeliers be returned and he is investigating possible legal action if the company refuses. Bullocks Wilshire was declared a “historic-cultural” landmark in 1968, allowing the city to at least delay changes that require a building permit. The removal of fixtures “is a little bit of a gray area,” Punt conceded, but he stressed that he wants “to prevail on I. Magnin either legally or morally.”

An I. Magnin spokeswoman said the company is looking into the requests for the return of the chandeliers, which are in storage.

Meanwhile, the once-dignified store has the air about it dreaded by city officials and preservationists: It feels like a swap meet. Boxes of old Christmas decorations clutter what used to be a menswear room. Messy piles of draperies and banners cover the floor of a former salon for crystal. Hundreds of dusty chairs and crowds of naked mannequins fill dress departments. Everything has a price tag on it.

Despite the sad jumble, the astonishing interiors can be appreciated, particularly on the elaborately designed first two floors. The perfume parlor is lined with glowing rose marble walls. The sportswear shop boasts a colorful abstract mural in fine woods and copper. Elevator doors, clocks, lamps, mirrors, drinking fountains and garment hooks all contribute to a Moderne-style fantasy land.

“Traditional department stores tend to be landmarks in their communities, but Bullocks Wilshire clearly is exceptional because of its architectural details,” said Kathryn Burns, western regional director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Designed by John and Donald Parkinson, who also worked on Los Angeles’ City Hall, the store has a distinctive exterior of terra-cotta and copper, its five functional floors leading in step backs to a central hollow tower. The layout was unusual for having both a pedestrian front entrance and a rear porte-cochere ; in that back driveway, motorists pulled up under a ceiling fresco depicting the world of transportation--an airplane, a Zeppelin and a luxury steam liner.

The dilemma is finding a new tenant who can function well in such a refined environment, experts say.

Less-decorated stores have been gutted for new uses and, in some cases, developers receive tax credits for rehabilitating historic buildings. As with the May Co. on Wilshire, developers must figure out what to do with such properties’ very high ceilings, old-fashioned columns that interrupt floors and the deep interiors with no access to windows.

“These are large monolithic buildings that can lend themselves to office planning. But it’s really tough to convert these old ladies to housing,” said Philadelphia architect Harris.

A developer wanted to tear down the May Co. on Wilshire, but changed plans after protests from preservationists and city government. Now, to win city approval to build adjacent office towers and a hotel, the Forest City Development firm proposes to hollow out the store’s center for a large atrium that will bring windows to interior offices and possible galleries.

“It’s a very difficult job to adaptively reuse these buildings. It’s much less expensive to tear it down and start from scratch,” said Gregory Vilkin, a Forest City vice president.

Yet, giving new life to the old stores can be profitable, said Ken Naito, vice president of H. Naito Properties. In 1974, the Portland firm changed the shuttered Rhodes department store into three stories of shops and two floors of offices, complete with sunny atrium. The complex, now more than 90% rented, helped pioneer the rebirth of downtown Portland.

At first, you can depend a bit on goodwill and nostalgia of people who shopped at the old store, Naito said. But the key, he added, “is you have to make it nice enough so people will want to go there.”