This Old House : Buildings: The roof leaks, the plumbing is faulty and the foundation sags. Nevertheless, this USC frat house for budding architects has earned official status as an L.A. cultural landmark.

Home to Los Angeles’ powerbrokers a century ago, USC’s fraternity row is a hodgepodge of beach volleyball pits constructed in front of fading Victorian houses, a place where toilet paper streamers wrap around fluted columns and Greek letters are painted into beer-stained sidewalks.

But landmarks pop up in unusual places, and here, at 715 W. 28th St., one of the frat houses has salvaged a little of the old dignity by earning the designation of a city cultural and historical monument.

It figures: 715 is the home of Alpha Rho Chi, USC’s co-ed architecture fraternity.

The Los Angeles City Council last week declared the house a monument at the urging of a neighborhood historical group and with the blessings of Alpha Rho Chi’s membership, which hopes that the designation will lead to more money for maintaining the rickety foursquare Colonial Revival home.

The building has become a fixer-upper for a group of frat brothers and sisters who not only enjoy interior renovation but study it. One brother refers to Alpha Rho Chi as “the anti-frat frat,” and most members profess to be mellower than their neighbors.

“The inside is what we experiment on,” said house manager Travis Eastepp as he leads a visitor through the house’s winding halls on a cursory tour of remodeled rooms. Eastepp’s bed rests on the skeletal frame of a deconstructed closet.

“Because we’re all architecture majors, we have a greater appreciation for a house this old,” said Maria Bringino, 23, from Huntington Park, who is in her last year at USC. The effort frat members have put into maintaining and renovating the building also makes them good housekeepers, she added.

“When you fix something and put all your hard work into it,” she said, “well, you have a personal stake in it.”

Alpha Rho Chi house is one of the few houses on fraternity row that has maintained some of its former glory, said James Childs, a member of the North University Park Community Assn., the group that nominated the building to join 600 other L.A. structures, including about 40 in the USC area, on the Cultural Heritage Commission’s list of monuments.

To gain a place on the list, a building must be nominated to the Cultural Heritage Commission, which evaluates its historical and architectural significance, then makes a recommendation to the City Council.

Although other fraternity row houses once possessed the architectural splendor of Alpha Rho Chi, decades of toga parties have worn down the interiors of the buildings while basketball courts and beach volleyball pits were grafted to their exteriors.

“In general, not all the houses are well kept up,” said Christopher Santos, an Alpha Rho Chi pledge. “I mean, we’re talking about drunk college students. . . . It’s hard to expect a lot of cleanliness from these people.”

But a visitor can still see the intricately carved window cornices, stately balconies and regal Ionic columns as James Shankland did in his day.

Shankland, a powerhouse Los Angeles attorney, commissioned Sumner Hunt, a renowned architect, to build his home on 28th Street in the 1890s. Construction was finished in 1896.

The Shankland building was one of a cluster of Victorian mansions that sprung up in the West Adams neighborhood in the 1880s to house Los Angeles’ power elite. Over the years, the elite went west and the fraternities moved in. In 1971, Alpha Rho Chi bought the 2 1/2-story building.

The fraternity, the only co-ed one on the row and one of the smallest, tried to be careful in its new digs.

“We were (a) professional and social (fraternity), so we tried not to trash the place up too much,” said Dwight Broadneaux, a 1978 USC alumnus and treasurer of Alpha Rho Chi’s Alumni Assn.

But age has taken its toll, and residents grumble about the plumbing and electricity, not to mention the roof, which lets in torrents of water during the rainy season. Plus, one corner of the foundation is sinking. The list goes on and on.

So the members are thrilled that their home is now registered as a piece of history. “For a house like this to be honored, it can only generate excitement,” Santos said.

Broadneaux said the fraternity is thinking about applying for national recognition, which would enable the house to receive grants. The city designation merely means that any irreversible renovations must be approved by the city’s cultural heritage association.

Will this designation hamper the traditional frat lifestyle?

Nope. Alpha Rho Chi follows the traditional frat rules of architectural protection.

“Just take out the light bulbs and the shades,” said Christopher Santos, “and that’s pretty much it.”