House of Dismantled Dreams : Owner of Historic Home Faces Jail, Fine for Selling Antique Decorations
The 90-year-old houses on Alvarado Terrace form a three-block island of elegance between Pico Boulevard and Hoover Street in a neighborhood plagued by poverty and drugs.
As precious reminders of the city’s genteel heritage, several of the houses have been named Cultural and Historical Monuments by the city, protecting them from unauthorized rebuilding or demolition. The street is also on the National Register of Historic Places.
But all that didn’t matter over the Labor Day weekend, when the cash-strapped owner of one of the lane’s finest houses decided that the kind of preservation that mattered most was financial.
To the horror of some neighborhood residents, the owner and a local antique dealer stripped the English Tudor Raphael House of some of its most valuable and distinctive features--stained-glass windows, original wooden fireplaces, and even the plaques identifying its national and local historic status.
It was, said neighbor Catherine A. Young, just another blow to the down-and-out neighborhood. “Because Pico-Union is such a poor area, the owner thought he could get away without anybody noticing.”
Young noticed. A member of a Community Redevelopment Authority advisory group for the neighborhood, she and other residents got the Department of Building and Safety to order the house’s owner to return the fixtures to the house by Sept. 25.
If he doesn’t comply, owner Gene Kidwell could face six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.
But Kidwell, who bought the house 3 1/2 years ago for twice its current value, says he’s no villain. Rather, Kidwell insists, he’s a victim of the decline of the neighborhood and the city, who’s simply trying to salvage what he can from his failed attempt to maintain the house as an inner-city bed-and-breakfast inn.
The stripping of Raphael House may have damaged a showpiece of Los Angeles’ architectural heritage, but to Kidwell, his plight reflects the futility of trying to preserve a remnant of the city’s grand past in a neighborhood locked into the bleakness of the present.
The house had been run as a bed-and-breakfast for eight years when Kidwell bought it in April, 1992 for $400,000. The neighborhood had its problems with crime, but Kidwell thought its rich past and proximity to the Los Angeles Convention Center would make it attractive to guests.
Alvarado Terrace was developed in the early 1900s by Pomery Powers, then the president of the Los Angeles City Council. A nearby windmill inspired the development’s first name--Windmill Links.
Its houses reflect the eclectic and adventurous architecture favored by the early urban settlers, with English Gothic and Tudor, Queen Anne and Spanish Revival houses on the same street.
Built in 1903, the Raphael House was designed by architects Sumner Hunt and Wesley Eager, who also designed the Automobile Club of Southern California building near USC. Robert Raphael, the house’s first owner, operated glass and lumber companies.
An Indiana native who has lived in Los Angeles since the early 1970s, Kidwell said he was eager to “re-create some of the old neighborhood” when he bought the house.
Twenty days later, the Los Angeles riots began.
Alvarado Terrace escaped the burning and looting, but the damage to the city’s image wiped out Kidwell’s bed-and-breakfast business. The number of guests steadily dropped, and last year the inn was without bookings for months on end, Kidwell said.
Kidwell said that he decided to default on his mortgage this year, after unsuccessfully trying to sell it or get foundation grants to keep the house up. He stopped making mortgage payments in March, and faces foreclosure.
Alvarado Terrace’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places doesn’t place any restrictions on owners of the houses. The designation is simply honorary, according to federal officials.
It is the Raphael House’s designation as a city monument that makes its modifications subject to approval by the City Cultural Heritage Commission.
Kidwell said that he decided to sell the objects from the house not only to recover some of his lost money, but because he feared that the house would be vandalized and broken into anyway, since it is no longer being used as an inn.
When he checked with various city officials, Kidwell says he was told he could remove the items.
“I’ve tried to do everything openly, it’s not like I snuck in in the middle of the night,” Kidwell said.
But Arthur Jaramillo, a senior inspector for the Building and Safety Department, said city officials would not have told Kidwell to remove the fixtures. “He didn’t talk to us, or any of the right people. I don’t know if he’s just using that as an excuse,” Jaramillo said.
Kidwell has not decided whether to comply with the city’s order to return the items to the house, and said he is waiting for advice from his attorney.
If Kidwell doesn’t meet the Monday deadline, Jaramillo said the city will seek to prosecute.
Bill Moore, the Department of Building and Safety’s preservation coordinator, said that property owners seldom fail to apply to the Cultural Heritage Commission before altering a historic house, and almost always comply with orders from the department.
Kidwell already faces one obstacle if he decides to comply with the city order. The antique dealer he contracted to sell the items has already sold the house’s windows.
Kidwell said the dealer acted against his instructions, but Jim Branham, owner of Oscar’s Antiques, a Sun Valley antique shop, denied that Kidwell told him not to sell the windows.
Jaramillo, however, said he told the shop two weeks ago not to sell any of the items.
Although he would not disclose the price of the windows, Branham said all of the objects from the house combined are worth less than $15,000.
That might take some of the sting out of Kidwell’s loss. But to Catherine Young, that hardly justifies the damage done to a neighborhood treasure. “If he wanted to take the furniture that would have been OK, but there’s no excuse for ripping out parts of the structure. He totally destroyed a cultural landmark.”
