Macy’s, Preservationists Play Hide and Seek : Landmarks: Removal of items from Art Deco Bullocks Wilshire store upsets preservationists and the mayor. Store officials agree to meet after the holidays.

At the season when retailers hope only for consumers’ goodwill, the corporate parent of the Bullock’s and I. Magnin department store chains finds itself unmerrily accused of shoplifting part of Los Angeles’ cultural history.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and architectural preservationists are strongly urging that R.H. Macy & Co. return scores of chandeliers, sconces, antique furniture pieces and other fixtures that the company stripped from the Bullocks Wilshire store after closing that 1929 Art Deco landmark in April.

The heretofore quiet campaign for the fixtures’ return has turned very public with the mayor’s recent involvement and with protests over the weekend--retailers’ busiest time of the year.

Outside the I. Magnin stores in Pasadena and Beverly Hills, shoppers were handed flyers bearing a message designed to take the ho-ho-ho out of any Macy’s Santa: “Don’t Let a Bankrupt New York Company Defile One of LA’s Most Beloved Landmarks.”

“We are taking the position that if Macy’s knew how much this means to the people of Los Angeles, they would return the fixtures. We want them to know it’s in their economic interest because of their relationships with their customers,” said Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the preservation group sponsoring the leafleting.

The Macy company has promised to return 12 of the 98 sets and individual items the city and conservancy want back in the building, such as chandeliers from the Mid-Wilshire store’s lingerie department and massive light fixtures from its former saddle shop.

The other 86, many now placed in other Macy-owned stores around the state, will be discussed after the hectic Christmas season, company spokeswoman Laura Mellilo said.

“We have a very open line of communications,” Mellilo said in an interview from New York. “We want to work toward a constructive and satisfactory solution.” She declined to discuss why the items were taken out in the first place.

Plans call for a law school library to take over the building and to restore rooms with original design elements and furnishings that have been removed.

The protesters’ holiday wish list includes furnishings from a second-floor suite designed to look like 19th-Century Parisian salons--marble-top tables, antique divans, Napoleonic-style chairs, a mantle clock and fireplace screens. Also being sought are Deco-style chrome and leather chairs from the first-floor men’s department, and Lalique chandeliers shaped like Streamline skyscrapers, also from the first floor.

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In a Dec. 7 letter to Macy Chairman Myron Ullman III, Riordan noted that the building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is “one of the most significant historic-cultural monuments in the city of Los Angeles.” Riordan said it should have been left intact as an anchor of the Wilshire corridor.

“The intrinsic worth of the removed items is far less than the loss of goodwill generated among our citizens who patronize Bullock’s and I. Magnin stores in Los Angeles,” the mayor continued. “Although your representative has communicated to our staff your intention to return some of the fixtures, it would appear that you intend to keep many of the most significant in your possession. I urge you to reconsider this stance.”

Clearly the Macy company is not pleased being depicted as a corporate Scrooge during a recession-era Christmas. Los Angeles attorney Jay Grodin, who represents the firm, described the leafleting as “counterproductive.”

Conservancy activists said they were not advocating a boycott of Macy-owned stores. The 10 or so who worked the sidewalk Sunday in front of the I. Magnin in Beverly Hills asked shoppers to sign form letters telling Ullman that he “has a moral responsibility” to return the fixtures. Protesters estimated that they will have collected about 1,200 signatures total in Pasadena and Beverly Hills.

Among those who signed was Suzanne Herzstam, a Los Angeles legal assistant who has warm childhood memories of Christmastime luncheons at the Bullocks Wilshire tearoom with her relatives. “That store had a lot of special meaning to the women in my family,” she said.

The store’s closing was attributed to a mixture of its now-unfashionable location and Macy’s corporate financial troubles. The shuttering stung Angelenos who cherished Bullocks Wilshire as a symbol of a sophisticated metropolis. The sting worsened after some missing chandeliers were spotted recently hanging in an I. Magnin store in San Francisco.

“It rankles me that part of Los Angeles’ history is in San Francisco,” said Mary Alice Wollam, who led Conservancy tours of the Bullocks Wilshire store and hopes to resume them after the building’s conversion to a law library.

Described as a “cathedral of commerce” when it opened in 1929, the building on Wilshire Boulevard just east of Vermont Avenue was designed to project an aura of modern luxury, down to its radiator covers and drinking fountains. The structure’s famous rose marble interior walls and Moderne-style murals remain intact, as does its granite and copper exterior.

City officials don’t want the fixtures forgotten in Macy’s ongoing bankruptcy hearings and the expected sale of the Bullocks Wilshire building’s 39-year lease to nearby Southwestern University. The store became part of Macy’s I. Magnin chain in 1988; Macy filed for bankruptcy last year.

Meanwhile, Caltech, which owns the land beneath the former store, has filed a court motion seeking the fixtures’ return under terms of the lease. That matter, to be heard next month in a New York bankruptcy court, is tied up with Macy’s alleged default on property taxes.

Los Angeles city officials concede they have no clear-cut legal rights. Los Angeles’ landmark protection law gives buildings such as Bullocks Wilshire some shield from demolition and interior changes, but does not mention fixtures.

Pasadena faced a similar situation in 1985, when a new owner removed about 50 original light fixtures from the Blacker House, a 1907 Craftsman-style masterpiece designed by architects Charles and Henry Greene.

The fixtures were not recovered but Pasadena passed an ordinance making it illegal to alter any Greene and Greene home without notifying the city. That Pasadena law does not ban fixture removal, but would delay it pending negotiations.

The conservancy contends that the Bullocks Wilshire items on its wish list are all important to the building’s ambience, whether it is a store or a law library.

“They are pretty things someplace else,” Wollam said, “but they tell a story when they are in their proper environment.”