Never Too Young

Think about Los Angeles in 1960. Or rather, think of what Los Angeles did not have the year that John F. Kennedy was elected president. No Music Center and no Bonaventure Hotel downtown. No Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and no County Museum of Art in Mid-Wilshire. No saucer-shaped Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport and no Frank Gehry-designed houses in Venice.

Today, those buildings are signatures of the Los Angeles landscape. But are they old enough to merit special protection as official landmarks? Should the city embrace the youth of much of its popular architecture, or wait for the test of time?

Those issues were discussed Wednesday before a city panel considering a controversial proposal that buildings be a minimum age before they qualify for designation as official “historic-cultural monuments.”

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission has no such rule now. But architectural preservationists are worried that it might adopt federal government guidelines that national landmarks, with some exceptions, be at least 50 years old. Even the hint of a 30-year waiting period, as New York City requires, triggered complaints of East Coast snobbery.

“Much of the landscape we are familiar with in Los Angeles is a product of the ‘50s and ‘60s. That is often why people come here, both to live and visit. And it’s the thing that makes Los Angeles unique,” said Jeffrey Chusid, a USC professor and preservation leader for the American Institute of Architects. “Once we understand that, there is no reason then to impose a regulation which would forbid us from protecting our resources.”

Commission President Mary George insisted that she had no specific age in mind when she requested recently that a minimum be investigated. “I don’t believe in black and white. I believe it has to be studied, and nothing is black and white in this life,” she said.

George said she has been concerned for some time that there are not enough objective criteria in granting “historic-cultural monument” status, an honor that can postpone demolition of a building for a year while efforts are made to save it. Her recent suggestion came in response to the landmark nomination of a Pacific Palisades house built in 1968 by Ray Kappe, a renowned architect who still lives in the dramatically cantilevered house of wooden beams and glass expanses.

At a commission meeting two weeks ago, George noted that the Kappe house is young compared to most of the city’s 620 historic-cultural monuments and asked whether age should be considered in future decisions. The result, George said, surprised her: a pile of protest letters to the commission and about half a dozen speakers Wednesday who urged her to drop the idea.

Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, told the commission that monument status should be decided case by case, without age rules. “Los Angeles is synonymous with modern architecture. It is inherent to our image and our history,” she said, citing the local work of such architecture masters as Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, John Lautner and Charles Eames. Few of their designs are official monuments, and neither are such Los Angeles attractions as the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, the Music Center or the Gehry-designed Chiat/Day ad agency headquarters in Venice.

“Rather than limiting which buildings could be designated because of their age, the commission should be encouraging public awareness of this important architectural heritage,” Dishman added.

Conservancy officials say that 51 Los Angeles landmarks were less than 50 years old at the time of their monument designation, including the Biltmore Hotel, the Airport Theme Building, the Automobile Club headquarters and the Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Park. If a 20-year minimum had been in place, the Watts Towers might not have survived because their creator, Simon Rodia, finished work in 1954, nine years before its designation as a monument, they say.

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission is to survey other cities’ age rules and discuss the matter again at a later date. But the likelihood of such a new rule was diminished Wednesday by the opposition of two of the five commissioners, Thomas Hunter Russell and Jorge Jackson.

Meanwhile, the panel is to visit the Kappe House on Brooktree Road to help decide its status. The commission’s staff architect has urged monument designation, describing the building as an icon of modern architecture for international visitors.

Kappe, founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, said in a telephone interview that he was surprised but not upset that his house triggered the debate. “Age to me doesn’t seem important. It’s more the value of the particular building,” he added. “It doesn’t get better with age.”

The National Register of Historic Places allows exceptions to its general 50-year rule if a building has strong significance, said its acting archivist, Jeff Joeckel, in an interview from Washington. For example, the Hope, Ark., house where President Clinton was born was added to the national list in 1994 when the building was 48 years old. Buildings related to the civil rights movement and the development of the atom bomb were listed before they hit 50.

Frank Gilbert, a senior field representative of the non-governmental National Trust for Historic Preservation, said 30 or 50 years might not be a suitable requirement for Los Angeles. But he added that some age rule would be helpful. “I think it’s appropriate to have a requirement so that time can render a judgment on buildings . . . so we can see which buildings really have stood the test of time,” he said.

In contrast, Chusid suggested that some future buildings might be instant classics. “Who knows? There may be some phenomenal structure that within a few years after its construction is so beloved that people want to protect it,” he said.