Neighborhood Sees a Buried Treasure in South Seas House : ‘In one day we cleaned the trash out of three rooms. That made us think, “Hey, we can do it.” ’

It’s taken plenty of digging at Los Angeles’ one-of-a-kind Polynesian island.

But West Adams district residents who teamed up with college architecture students say they have uncovered hidden treasure at the place they call the South Seas House.

Buried under countless layers of faded paint and the peeling redwood roofing shingles of its steeply pitched roof is a genuine landmark--Los Angeles’ first tropical theme house.

All they’ve got to do now, say the residents and students, is persuade the owner of the boarded-up, abandoned house to let them preserve it.

Problem is, the city owns the home.

Officials fear that the place is too far gone to be saved without spending more money than the city can afford. They want to bulldoze it, and the sooner the better.

“Technically, it’s an eyesore and a liability,” says Al Carmichael, planning officer for the Department of Parks and Recreation, which controls the site at the northwest corner of Arlington Avenue and 24th Street.

Trespassers are in danger of falling through the gaping hole in the worn oak floor in its living room, Carmichael says. Neighboring homes are at risk of catching fire if squatters come in and set the place ablaze. That happened recently when intruders tried to burn cabinet shelves in the house’s ornate brick fireplace.

“Technically, I could demolish it tomorrow,” Carmichael said Friday. “I don’t want the city to get sued.”

Over on 24th Street, however, that kind of talk was causing supporters of the house to cringe.

Patched up, painted and pampered a little, the South Seas House would form a grand entryway to the West Adams area, neighbor Karen Haas said.

“We were surprised when we learned the city owned it,” said Haas, an interior designer who has lived across the street from the house for eight years.

“We couldn’t believe the city would let it get in such bad shape. If a private owner had let that happen, he’d have been hauled Downtown years ago.”

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Everyone acknowledges that the South Seas House started out in 1902 as a thing of beauty and an asset to Los Angeles.

It was owned by Joseph Dupuy, an opera singer and musician who was a founder of the Los Angeles Symphonic Orchestra.

Besides being home to his wife and their two sons, the house with the soaring roof and eye-catching peaked gables marked the center of activity in 1915 when Dupuy organized a national music convention in Los Angeles--the largest musical event that had ever been staged in America.

Architecture experts say the Polynesian look that gave the house its nickname is the result of a blending of Colonial Revival, Queen Anne, Medieval and Asian influences. Its exotic design was a precursor of the eclectic architecture of the 1920s featured on the Chinese theaters, Assyrian tire factories and Egyptian apartment houses around Los Angeles.

A series of other owners lived in the house after Dupuy died in 1922. The city purchased the home 24 years ago to make room for the proposed widening of Arlington Avenue.

The road project never occurred, however. Eventually, the city leased the house to a family.

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Vandals and squatters seemed to move in the moment that family moved out a few years ago, neighbors say. The community mobilized after the trespassers set the place on fire trying to burn cabinet pieces in the fireplace. The trespassers burned a hole in the living room floor instead.

By last summer more than 100 neighbors had rallied to preserve the house. Plans were drawn up calling for the structure to be rehabilitated and used by local nonprofit groups to operate youth programs. With some reluctance, city officials gave the residents until last Dec. 31 to raise the estimated $100,000 needed to repair the place.

Community leaders raised about $7,000 in small donations from neighbors and got promises of another $2,000. But the deadline came and went as the South Seas House continued to be battered by a tide of neglect and vandalism.

Then a group of 15 architecture students from nearby USC got involved.

Students in Prof. Jeffrey Chusid’s newly formed architecture preservation class in February picked the South Seas House as a research project.

Discovering that original blueprints were long gone, the students set out to re-create construction plans that could be used in the rehabilitation of the sagging old dwelling.

Soon, junior Bill Ketcham, 22, was scraping through layers of old paint trying to determine which walls were new and which were original. Senior Sun Boo Choi, 23, crawled through the attic to find original rafters, beams and joists.

Keith Olsen, a 20-year-old junior, used a flashlight and took precise measurements of the darkened kitchen, where windows were boarded up to keep vandals out. “It got so claustrophobic that we’d have to come out every half hour or so,” he said.

The students spent 18 hours a week for five weeks climbing over and crawling through the old house, cataloguing every material used in its construction and measuring every square inch of the place.

Neighbors whose spirits had started to sag under the city’s red tape took notice. Soon, the students were being joined in the old house by residents eager to lend a hand.

“This group is the best thing that’s ever happened to this house,” said next-door neighbor Carol Isadore, whose family has lived there since 1948.

“The kids triggered a cleanup of the place,” agreed neighbor Laura Meyers, a writer who has lived in the area for 12 years and has helped lead the preservation effort. “In one day we cleaned the trash out of three rooms. That made us think, ‘Hey, we can do it.’ ”

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After emptying the house of trash, the neighbors began painting it and planting flowers in the front yard. Soon, the South Seas House almost looked as though someone lived there again.

City officials apparently like that look.

A week ago, neighbor Robert Leary, a television marketing executive, was in the front yard of the house repairing one of its rain gutters when City Councilman Nate Holden stopped to chat.

“He looked up at the rafter ends and asked if we could save them or whether they’d have to be replaced,” Leary recounted. “He said he was going to get Parks and Rec out to trim the tree here in front.”

If that type of city cooperation continues, the neighborhood will be able to move forward with its plans to seek corporate grants and professional construction donations that will start the real renovation work, said volunteer David Raposa.

“The neighbors here don’t want a vacant lot filled with old sofas, bums and filth,” said Raposa, a realty broker and Adams district preservation activist. “All we need is for the city to let us work on this house.”

Back at City Hall, parks official Carmichael said he’s waiting for the neighbors to bring in a formal proposal, along with the students’ detailed construction drawings. Then, he hinted, work can begin.

“The ball is in their court,” Carmichael said.