Haven for Historic L.A. Buildings Could Use an Angel

In Los Angeles, old buildings don’t just fade away. They get bulldozed and paved over. The old ones must disappear so the city with the short memory can continue beginning again.

But Angelenos aren’t immune to the warm, sad pangs of memory. At the eleventh hour, the odd Victorian or Queen Anne home sometimes is saved. Some are salvaged and trucked away. A few end up in a place called Heritage Square.

For nearly 30 years, buildings torn from their natural moorings have been deposited at the square, a museum and park alongside the serpentine Pasadena Freeway in Highland Park. Commuters speed past, probably only vaguely aware that something unusual lurks in their peripheral vision.

A valiant and persistent group of volunteers aspires to make this row of old wooden dowagers something more than a driver’s backdrop. They envision turning Heritage Square into a heaven of Los Angeles’ architectural history.

But considerable work lies ahead. For now, Heritage Square remains something more like a purgatory, in endless search of a heavenly host.

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Street signs don’t mark the way, but if you are interested you can find the location off the Avenue 43 exit of the freeway, where Homer Street dead-ends.

On Fridays, weekends and some holidays, the volunteer staff opens a chain-link fence and you can walk a gravel road past five houses, a church, a barn and a railroad depot that represent striking examples of Los Angeles architecture, circa 1890.

Fine woodwork and a lush green and red paint scheme distinguish Hale House. A quaint railroad depot, once located in the Westside community of Palms, will soon house the gift shop. An octagonal house salvaged from Pasadena is unique in Southern California and evocative of an early attempt at social engineering--light, air, heat and cooling for every resident of the home.

Perhaps 800 people a month visit Heritage Square. The normally sleepy preserve will get a small boost this weekend when annual evening “lamplight” tours attract an extra audience to see performers reenact a Victorian family’s holiday celebration.

The daily reality of Heritage Square can be less festive. With just two full-time employees, the museum struggles to maintain the eight old buildings and make occasional upgrades.

Paint chips peel from the faded white facade of the William H. Perry residence. The gray-blue Valley Knudsen house is already beginning to mildew, despite a paint job just five years ago. And the Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church is in dire need of a make-over, 17 years after it arrived by truck from Pasadena. Seismic repairs have stabilized the church, but plaster and lath dangle from the ceiling. Two spectacular stained-glass windows are missing and replaced by smudged plastic.

It will take perhaps $1 million to make the old church with the generous belfry the showpiece it should be.

Barry Herlihy, the Pasadena lawyer who heads Heritage Square, envisions stage lighting, a projection booth and families renting the old church for weddings.

Some day, he says, sighing a little.

“If I could sell the idea of this building to someone, some angel, then we could get going on it,” Herlihy says. “It could happen tomorrow, or 10 years from now.”

The problem is that Heritage Square has been waiting for tomorrow for nearly 30 years.

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The idea for a haven for historic buildings arose in the late 1960s, when the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission wanted to save two historic homes being cleared to make way for the high-rises of Bunker Hill.

Initially, it was hoped that the two houses could be restored in a “square” on the downtown hillside, next to the Angels Flight railway that once connected the hill with the rest of downtown.

When that plan stalled, Councilman Art Snyder proposed moving the homes to a narrow patch of surplus parkland, hard by the Pasadena Freeway. The newly created Cultural Heritage Foundation of Southern California shipped the homes, known as “Donovan’s Castle” and the “Saltbox,” to the strip.

No sooner had both arrived in 1969 than fire destroyed them.

It would not be until the next year, with the arrival of the Hale and Valley Knudsen houses, that the refuge opened. Although built along a gravel street, it maintains the name Heritage Square.

From Day 1, this rest home for aging architecture has struggled to attract patrons and money.

“When you have a choice between giving to cancer research, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, the Philharmonic, let’s face it, historic buildings are way down at the bottom of the list,” said Ileana Welch, who helped create Heritage Square for the city. “It’s no contest.”

There have been some nice donations and a few inspired barters. More often, 50 volunteers get the work done and keep the place open. Herlihy was up on a tractor a couple of weeks ago, depositing soil for a new kitchen garden. Others lead tours, clean up and tend to many small touches.

More difficult to create is a sense of coherence and place with buildings that have been uprooted from around the city.

No matter how glorious the ship at sea, it can’t help but look forlorn in dry dock.

After 15 years working on the homes, Herlihy pushes ahead resolutely. He dreams of the day when dozens more volunteers run living history programs, when the trolley car bell clangs and when Heritage Square is a recognized destination. He keeps hoping for an angel who sees the potential of the place. And he sees how much still needs to be done and sighs again.

“If we don’t achieve a modicum of success here, it’s not going to survive,” he says. “We are competing with so many other things that have so much more visibility. . . . It’s a hard sell.”

More information about this weekend’s tours of Heritage Square is available at (626) 796-2898, Ext. 225.