Riordan’s Pitch: You Too Can Aid : Mayor’s Mansion Makeover Plan : Remodeling: Supporters are asked to help fund $2.5-million refurbishing of Getty House, to be used for parties and for hosting dignitaries.
If you have $380 that’s just burning a hole in your pocket, here’s an idea: Donate a new wastebasket for Los Angeles’ soon-to-be-spruced-up mayor’s mansion.
Or, if money is a bit tight this holiday season, perhaps a $225 antique magnifying glass is more to your liking and wallet.
That was the pitch Sunday as Mayor Richard Riordan entertained about 350 supporters with a preview of restoration plans at the Getty House, just one day before workers are set to begin tearing down walls at the 73-year-old landmark.
Riordan won’t follow former Mayor Tom Bradley’s lead in living at the Hancock Park mansion--his $6-million Brentwood estate suits him just fine, thanks--but he does want to use the 19-room house for throwing regal parties and hosting international dignitaries.
“(The design) is subdued and it’s elegant,” he said between chats in the spacious back garden with friends and politicos who paid $100 a ticket to be there. “It’s a great way of showing off Los Angeles.”
A strong supporter of privatization in government, Riordan says no money from the city’s strained coffers will be used for the restoration. Instead, a private, not-for-profit group--headed by Riordan’s girlfriend, Nancy Daly--has been set up to seek a total of $2.5 million in cash contributions, pro bono services and donated furnishings.
More than a dozen local designers showed off their wish-list work Sunday, taking guests on tours and displaying photographs and drawings of how they want each room to look when it’s done.
One guest already knows what the “before” looks like--former Mayor Bradley.
“We’re going heavily into beiges,” a designer in the library/sitting room explained to Bradley, who was back for the first time in almost 18 months to see the home where he lived as mayor for 16 years. “It’s very masculine and sophisticated.”
Designer Linda Comfort is taking a more playful approach in an upstairs children’s room and gym, decorating the area around themes from the children’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are,” using footprints, animals and other images from the book.
The cost for all this work, however, is serious business, and that was made clear to guests Sunday. From the intimate powder room to the wine cellar and the sprawling bedroom suites, each virtually empty room had on prominent display a list of planned furnishings and what it would cost supporters to donate them to the mansion.
Among the amenities: two $550 iron stools for the kitchen, a set of bathroom towel bars for $293, bronze bookends for $811 and a gold-and-jade vase for $3,800.
Not exactly discount items from the Home Shopping Network, but Selim Zilkha didn’t mind.
The Bel-Air businessman was so impressed by the plans that he pulled out his checkbook and pledged to donate about $25,000 to furnish the entire library. That will get him a plaque with his name on it, and the restoration committee’s great appreciation.
“I like the mayor,” said Zilkha, a Riordan backer whose company does offshore oil and gas exploration in Texas and Louisiana. “The place is very run-down, and we need something like this for the city.”
The house was built in 1921 for $83,000, and it was later home to Hollywood legend John Barrymore and his wife, actress Dolores Costello, among other luminaries. The Getty family bought the property in 1957 and donated it to the city two decades later.
Bradley is the only Los Angeles mayor to have occupied the official residence, but it turns out he left his own legacy behind after moving out.
Renovators recently came across some old snapshots of the mayor tucked away upstairs, and they came upon a hand-stitched screen that Bradley had been trying to find. The movers were so rushed when he left office, the former mayor said, “there’s no telling how many things we left behind.”
If the prices on the designers’ wish lists seem high, at least they’re one up on the Pentagon, whose notorious toilet seats were billed at $640 each.
The plumber’s price tag in the downstairs bathroom of the Getty Mansion is $663--but for that, you get the whole toilet.
