Patched and polished, a Wright fixer-upper prepares to reopen

Doc X. Nghiem has spent more than a year being enchanted by the beauty and originality of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1921-vintage Hollyhock House. But as the man immediately responsible for fixing some of the historic building’s flaws and shoring up its points of vulnerability, he also knows its ability to frustrate.

Now, Nghiem and the workers who have been laboring to plug leaks, remove mold, replace rotted wood and deal with corroded drainpipes are almost ready, after a five-year closure, to let the public back inside the city-owned house-on-a-hill near Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. Among the highlights are a magnificent living room with a fireplace edged by a moat and topped by a Modernist bas-relief, some Wright-designed furnishings and lots of geometrical stained glass.

Touch-ups and termite eradication are all that remain to be done, and Nghiem expects the house to be ready next month. The city’s Cultural Affairs Department, which operates Hollyhock House and the surrounding Barnsdall Art Park, will reopen it for guided tours as soon as possible, said Margie Reese, the department’s general manager, even if that means holding off on a more formal reopening celebration. Visitors will enter in groups of no more than 15. “It’s a treasure, and it’ll be a high-profile facility for us,” said Reese.

Hollyhock House, with its expansive views, architectural references to ancient Mayan structures and decorative spires and friezes representing the original owner’s favorite flower, the hollyhock, was closed in 2000 with the rest of Barnsdall Park.

Over the next three years, the city spent $16 million, according to former project manager Willis Yip. Most of the money went toward an overhaul of the landscaping to beautify the site and make the hilltop park’s 90-foot-high embankments less vulnerable to soil erosion and earthquakes. Damage to Hollyhock House from the 1994 Northridge earthquake was repaired in that “phase one” project, and its roof and those of two other Wright-designed structures, a garage and a guest house, were strengthened against future quakes. The park reopened in June 2003, but the house remained closed to the public.

Nghiem, a structural engineer with the city’s Bureau of Engineering, took over as the Hollyhock project manager as a second phase of work began in December 2003. He expected that several months of touching up and improving access for the handicapped would ready the building for tours by the following June.

Then workers found mold, caused by long-standing leaks in the multilevel roof system. Roof leaks had been a problem at Hollyhock House dating back to when petroleum heiress Aline Barnsdall first moved in. She soon fled the house because she couldn’t stand the dampness, deeding the structure and the hilltop to the city as a park for enjoying the arts. The leaks were supposed to have been fixed in the phase one roof overhaul, but the two rainy seasons since then revealed that Hollyhock still was not watertight.

The rains also have been unkind to the Ennis-Brown House, a 1924-vintage Frank Lloyd Wright hillside home in Los Feliz. A retaining wall holding back the ground under a parking lot there is badly damaged, and Ennis-Brown also needs a new roof and other repairs, said Franklin De Groot, executive director of the Trust for Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which owns the house. He said the nonprofit group remains $1.4 million to $2 million short in its fundraising for a $5-million renovation and earthquake stabilization project that’s expected to last up to two years. The house has been closed for repairs since January.

Guiding a visitor on a tour of Hollyhock House last week, project manager Nghiem pointed out how Wright’s placement of windows, skylights, doors and rooftop planters low to the ground or close to the flat roofs made it easy for rainwater to damage wood frames and porous concrete. Some leaks have been repaired, but protective plastic sheeting now covers three parapets where water still can get in. The plastic will stay on until May and will be laid on again before next fall’s rainy season, Nghiem said. More study is needed to figure out how to fix the leaks, a job left to a future phase three, perhaps a year or two from now.

The third phase is budgeted at $2.5 million, Nghiem said, and will be funded with money from a city bond issue for repairing earthquake-damaged buildings. Workers will install steel reinforcement bars to shore up Hollyhock’s walls of hollow clay tile against future quakes. Doing the same for the nearby guest house known as Residence A would cost an additional $2.5 million, Nghiem estimates -- money that hasn’t been found.

Eventually, a fourth phase of construction would be needed to repaint interiors, restore aging wood and address other, highly specialized aesthetic improvements that could cost millions more. Two private, nonprofit support groups -- the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation and the Friends of Hollyhock House -- plan to help raise money for future restoration. In the meantime, they have worked on funding more immediate amenities, including a new, $100,000 sign to be installed on Hollywood Boulevard, kilns for ceramics classes in the park’s art education center, a $25,000 oriental carpet for Hollyhock House’s dining room, and the repurchase of a reading table that was part of the house’s original furniture but got sold off many years ago.

Nila Arslanian, vice president of the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation, said she is frustrated that longer-range planning remains nebulous for securing the millions needed to restore the house fully. But she says the interior is in better shape than could be expected after a five-year closure, and she isn’t complaining about the pace of the most recent phase of construction. “Given all the issues they’re facing, and the worst winter ever, I don’t think [delays] have been terribly excessive,” Arslanian said. “Things have been put off because they had to be put off.”

After Hollyhock reopens, Nghiem expects architects and engineers to spend perhaps a year studying and planning how to fortify walls without altering their dimensions and appearance.

“How to stabilize that and not impose on the aesthetics of the historical look is going to be a challenge,” said Carmelo Sabatella, a city architect serving as an advisor on the project.

When it came to installing wheelchair lifts, the challenge of making practical improvements without damaging historical values couldn’t be met, Nghiem said, because the lifts would have blocked favorite views of the exterior or required dismantling Wright’s narrow inside staircase. Portable metal tracks that can be laid over steps will make ground-floor entry possible for people in wheelchairs, but they won’t be able to view the smaller upstairs, including Aline Barnsdall’s bedroom. Curator Virginia Kazor said that people unable to climb the steps can watch a video tour of the upstairs rooms.

Nghiem’s enthusiasm and pride in tackling Hollyhock’s problems were palpable as he walked the house, detailing some of the fixes made in the $470,000 phase two, and describing conundrums still to be solved. Learning the house’s vulnerabilities, he said, will allow him to write a maintenance manual to safeguard Wright’s creation.

“I enjoy it a lot,” Nghiem said. “Otherwise, it would drive you crazy. You have to take all the pain, but the results can be astounding.

“Saving something like this? Most people can only dream of it.”