South Bay : Officials Refuse to Designate Hotel as Historic Landmark

Barnabey’s Hotel and Restaurant may look old and historic--actually, it’s only 35 years old--but the Manhattan Beach City Council doesn’t want to spend the extra money to protect it as a local historic landmark.

The hotel, with its pink exterior and Victorian interior on Sepulveda Boulevard near Rosecrans Avenue, has been owned by the Post family since 1974, but the family recently lost it in a foreclosure. Fearing that the new owners, EMIF, California Hotel Co., would change the hotel, former owner Mary Kay Post and local historian Jan Dennis tried to persuade the city to declare it a historic landmark.

But City Council members did not want to spend $10,000 to research and write a municipal law to preserve historical landmarks because there are already state and federal programs for saving historic buildings.

Dennis is planning to ask the state to give the building Point of Historical Interest status, which is less protective than the California Register of Historical Landmarks and would not protect the hotel from being torn down.

“The hotel is like a mini-museum if you know what you’re looking for,” Dennis said. She said the hotel has a collection of Metlox pottery, made in Manhattan Beach from 1927 until 1989. The carpeting was manufactured in England and Belgium specifically for the hotel, which has a complete botanical garden.