Apartments Historic, City Architect Says

Efforts to save the Chase Knolls Apartments from the wrecking ball received a boost Monday when the chief architect for the city Cultural Heritage Commission recommended that the Sherman Oaks complex be designated a Historic-Cultural Monument.

The commission is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the recommendation of staff architect Jay Oren, who concluded that the 1949-era apartment complex on Riverside Drive deserves the designation, which would make it more difficult to demolish the buildings.

Chase Knolls, Oren wrote, “is an intact and representative example of an exemplary housing type--mid-Twentieth Century garden apartment--used in the development of affordable housing in Los Angeles.”

Oren said in an interview that the project in the “Modern style” is worth preserving.

“It’s part of our past,” Oren said. “It’s a window on how people in the San Fernando Valley lived in the middle of the last century.”

The recommendation was hailed by residents who had faced the threat of eviction from the 19-building, 260-unit complex.

“This is very significant,” resident Sandy Roberts said. “His [Oren’s] word carries a lot of weight with the Cultural Heritage Commission and the City Council. While it doesn’t guarantee we are going to win, it gives us a lot of hope.”

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Councilman Mike Feuer’s proposal for monument status has touched off a heated debate among architects and historians about whether the cluster of post-World War II buildings deserves protection.

Legacy Partners bought the apartment complex in January with plans to demolish it and build 362 market-rate apartments and 40 low-income units for senior citizens.

Ben Reznik, an attorney for Legacy, accused city officials of misusing the Historic-Cultural Monument process to try to save buildings that have no historic or cultural significance.

Two architects hired by Legacy will testify that the buildings do not merit saving, Reznik said. The property does not exemplify the broad cultural, economic or social history of the nation, state or community, contend architectural preservation experts Robert Chattel and Elizabeth McMillian, who are working for the developer.

“Instead, the property is simply one of the many examples of residential and commercial development that was commonplace throughout the San Fernando Valley following World War II,” Reznik wrote in a letter to the commission, summarizing the architects’ conclusions.

Instead of being an “architectural-type specimen,” Reznik said the project borrows elements from the Garden City style but is actually a “garden variety” apartment project.

Others disagree, including Jeff Samudio, who teaches historic preservation at L.A. Trade Tech and is a member of the state Historical Resources Commission.

Samudio said the apartment complex is an example of a style of architecture that is “coming into its own as far as being recognized” for providing quality housing for the post-war working class.

He noted another Garden-style complex in Los Angeles, Village Green, has made the National Registry, so there is a precedent.

“There may not be that many dissertations on the subject, but it is of growing interest and growing understanding that this is a unique building type,” Samudio said.

Preservation laws do not just recognize important works by master architects but also buildings that “are representative of a particular period of time,” Samudio said.

That standard was used to provide protective designation for some sharecroppers’ shanties near Bakersfield that were put up when Oklahomans migrated west from the Dust Bowl.

The designation of Chase Knolls also is supported by the Los Angeles Conservancy, which believes the complex is “an exceptional example of a Modern garden apartment complex.”

Feuer said he hopes the commission will give more weight to the recommendation of its own “objective” staff architect than to those hired by Legacy.

“They [Legacy architects] obviously have a vested interest in the outcome,” Feuer said.

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If the designation is granted, Legacy would have to apply for special permission to demolish the buildings, and a decision would come only after a hearing and evaluation process that could take up to a year.

The City Council has designated nearly 670 structures in Los Angeles as Historic-Cultural Monuments, including five since November.

Buildings that received the designation include the 1929 Hollywood home owned by game-show host Bob Barker on Outpost Drive, which was designated because it was judged an “excellent unaltered example” of the Spanish Colonial Revival style.

Others designated in recent months include the Villa Elaine apartment building in Hollywood, the Neutra Office Building, the Horatio Cogswell house on Venice Avenue and Maverick’s Flat, a building rented for private parties in the Crenshaw District.