Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Barrington Building Will Be Demolished : Aftermath: Structure that housed doctors to the stars is damaged beyond repair. Most tenants will lose their belongings and patients’ records.

For more than 30 years, the Barrington Building in the 11600 block of West Olympic Boulevard had been a great place to spot celebrities. Edward G. Robinson, Mama Cass and Steve McQueen used to stop by. More recently, Drew Barrymore, Linda Evans and Madonna reportedly made appearances.

The reason: Many of Los Angeles’ top-flight dentists were housed in the six-story building. And some of the city’s most prominent psychiatrists and psychologists, as well.

“It’s the mental health center of L.A.,” said Kay Veach, 70, whose first-floor coffee shop had kept locals fed on biscuits, gravy and other “home cooking” since 1967. “And now, they’re tearing it down.”

The metal and glass building buckled badly in Monday’s earthquake and has been leaning precariously to the south. All week, the area around it has been roped off, snarling traffic on Olympic. Right after the quake, a few fast-moving tenants entered through an unlocked back door and rescued important possessions. But the majority were unable to retrieve patients’ phone numbers or medical records. A demolition contract was issued late Friday at the city’s demand, virtually ensuring that everything inside will be lost.

As the end neared, many tenants--some of them angry that the city was not giving them one last chance to salvage their belongings--were still trying to grasp the idea that their beloved building was coming down.

“It’s like losing a family. It really is,” said Marshall S. Cherkas, a psychoanalyst and forensic psychiatrist who worked in the Barrington for 26 years. Cherkas said the building had been built by a group of psychoanalysts, and stood as a “tour de force of mental health” with a special camaraderie.

“Now everyone is spreading to the winds and it’s very sad,” he said.

“Everyone wanted to be in the Barrington Building. It had sort of a reputation,” said Sharon Bloom, a psychotherapist who had practiced there since 1987. This was a building, she said, where you never got locked out of your office--because Veach kept emergency keys in her coffee shop. Other office buildings were anonymous. This one was warm--its residents seemed to make it a point to get to know one another.

“Maybe it’s because they’re in the helping professions,” said Bloom, “but (Barrington tenants) are very friendly, open people.” Her third-floor office was among the worst hit. “Somebody told me you have to crawl on your belly to that particular floor,” she said.

Like everyone else, Bloom worried most over the loss of her patients’ records. But there were other things as well. “I’ve had my therapy chairs for 20 years,” she said sadly. “My son is now 30, but I had an arts and crafts thing he had done when he was 7 or 8 on my bulletin board. I liked it.”

Robert Crane, the president of Crane Realty Services, which manages the building, said he was told on Thursday that the building would have to come down. The Barrington, said an official communique from the city, posed a “present, imminent, extreme and immediate hazard or danger to life and limb, health and safety.”

When Friday’s aftershocks shook the building again, sending more glass flying from its south face, officials became determined to level the building as soon as possible. At midday, city workers set about disconnecting power lines that might be in the path of flying debris. Then, just before nightfall, the Department of Public Works issued the demolition contract. Gerald Takaki, chief of the bureau of community safety, said the wrecking ball would start its work no later than Saturday morning.

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Fears about the impending destruction brought some tenants to the police lines to plead for permission to re-enter the building. Just 10 minutes, they told the National Guard troops who kept them at bay--that’s all they’d need.

“One guy said he had a research paper in there that he’d been working on for 10 years,” said one of the Guardsmen, recalling one of the sadder stories he had heard that day. He understood why people were sad about their losses, he said, but for his part, he was trying to stay as far from the building as possible. “If you ask me, I don’t want to be anywhere near it.”

On Friday, the building attracted a constant stream of visitors, many who had seen it on television. Larry Benjamin, an Internal Revenue Service agent who worked down the street in the City National Bank building, was one of them, and he offered a morbid suggestion. “They ought to get someone from Death Row to go through the building and save the records,” he said.

Debbie Thaxton drove over from her badly shaken home, she said, because this was where she had her teeth cleaned. “My dental office is in there--where I get tortured,” she said wryly. “I just wanted to watch the building go down so I know I’ll never have to go back.”

Jaime Reynoso was shooting videotape to take home to his 73-year-old grandmother, he said. “I used to bring her here to see her doctor,” he said. “Man, it looks bad.”

Margaret Sutherland stood nearby. She had worked as a waitress at Veach’s eatery, called Marshall’s Coffee Shop, for seven years. Her last paycheck was still in the cash register inside. It had been a fun job, she said. Because of its location at the front of the building (not to mention Veach’s long-standing reputation as the Barrington’s mother hen), the coffee shop served as gossip central.

“All the big film stars went in there,” Sutherland said, nodding toward the building. “You could write a book! That was a very unique coffee shop.”

Cherkas and others confirmed that many of the building’s visitors were high-profile. “I personally did not see a lot of celebrities. But I have several colleagues who see major rock stars, movie stars, athletes, TV stars,” he said. Sometimes, he added with a chuckle, that led to some confusion.

“I was riding up the elevator one day and two teen-age girls started staring at me,” he recalled. “Finally, one walked over and said, ‘You’re Danny Kaye aren’t you?’ ”