BH Waterworks 013
This is an article about the building that appeared in the Los Angeles Times:
(April 22, 1928)
BEVERLY HILLS CONSTRUCTING PLANT
Ornate Water Project Located on Landscaped Site
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Beauty of architecture and landscaping make the new Beverly Hills water treatment plant, being completed at La Cienega Boulevard and Country Club Drive (Olympic Blvd. was called Country Club Drive originally), a public improvement project of unusual distinction. The structure calls for a cost of $147,882.73 and with site, machinery and verdurous adornment, the project represents an investment of about $350,000. The building faces on La Cienega Boulevard, the grounds extending to Country Club Drive on the south, Le Doux Road on the west and Gregory Way at the north. The structure was designed and planned by Salisbury, Bradshaw & Taylor. With its surrounding of trees, lawns, flowers and shrubs placed according to carefully devised landscaping plan, the place has the appearance of a beautiful park and, especially on the south side, lends itself to such purpose for visitors. Seymour Thoma, landscape architect, prepared the landscaping plans and the work is under inspection of George V. Chapman, Superintendent of Parks and Parkways at Beverly Hills, it was stated. A $400,000 bond issue, sanctioned at the election in Beverly Hills last Monday, will provide for installing two recreation parks, Mr. Chapman said. One will be located across the street to the east of the water plant and will occupy a site about ten acres, having La Cienega Boulevard, Country Club Drive and Gregory Way as its boundaries, it was announced. It will be equipped with tennis courts, baseball diamond, playgrounds, wading pools and other recreational facilities, Mr. Chapman said. The other contemplated park is to be located on a sixteen-acre site facing Country Club Drive on the south and Linden Drive on the east, it was stated. Mr. Chapman will supervise their installation.
These are some excerpts from another LA Times article about the fight to save the building:
(Nov. 16, 1986)
-Admirers of an abandoned waterworks in La Cienega Park in Beverly Hills hope to save the Spanish-style building despite plans to wreck it to make way for new athletic fields. "It's part of our heritage in the city," said Pauline Stein, chairwoman of the city's Architectural Commission. "I think it could be rehabilitated and there could be some adaptive re-use of the building."
-The concrete building, completed in 1928 at a cost of $147,882.73, was the first municipal water treatment plant on the West Coast, according to a study conducted for the American Society of Civil Engineers.
-Designed to resemble a Spanish Colonial hacienda, its cathedral-like rosette window, flying buttresses and 130-foot-high, Moorish-style tower have led generations of passers-by to believe that the structure is a church. In fact, the gray concrete walls and red tile roofs hide a warren of laboratories, treatment rooms and settling tanks that have fallen into disrepair since 1976, when the city began taking all its water from the Metropolitan Water District, a regional agency.
-"I think we need the open space {soccer fields} more," Salter said. "This is not to say that stuff with historical meaning shouldn't be saved, but I don't believe this is of that nature." (I'm really glad you were wrong, Mr. Salter)
-Although the building's southern end, where water was once sprayed into the air as part of a process to remove hydrogen sulfide from it, shows severe damage, the rest of the waterworks appears to be in good shape, said John Kariotis, a consulting structural engineer. He said the hydrogen sulfide weakened the concrete and exposed the steel reinforcing bars to rust.
-Built at a time before water was available from outside the city, the water treatment plant was designed to reduce the high concentration of dissolved solids in Beverly Hills ground water and to counter the characteristic "rotten eggs" odor caused by hydrogen sulfide. Once the chemical was recovered through the aeration process that damaged the southern end of the building, it was heated over a small oil stove at the base of the tower so that it would rise and dissipate into the atmosphere instead of wafting into neighboring homes.
-A recent visit to the abandoned structure found graffiti on virtually every inch of wall space, testimony to the visits of intruders who are periodically rousted by police.
-Despite that, and despite the plans that call for new tennis facilities and a field for baseball and soccer on the site, the unique qualities of the building should be taken into account, said Albert Hoxie, a retired architectural historian at UCLA. "It's good architecture and it's a good example of the period in which Beverly Hills flourished, that early great era of growth when they still had money to spend on things that were well done, and we're not going to get a lot more of that," he said. "Things are being torn down with such speed in Beverly Hills that if we don't start saving some things we're going to be in trouble."
BH Waterworks 013
This is an article about the building that appeared in the Los Angeles Times:
(April 22, 1928)
BEVERLY HILLS CONSTRUCTING PLANT
Ornate Water Project Located on Landscaped Site
----------
Beauty of architecture and landscaping make the new Beverly Hills water treatment plant, being completed at La Cienega Boulevard and Country Club Drive (Olympic Blvd. was called Country Club Drive originally), a public improvement project of unusual distinction. The structure calls for a cost of $147,882.73 and with site, machinery and verdurous adornment, the project represents an investment of about $350,000. The building faces on La Cienega Boulevard, the grounds extending to Country Club Drive on the south, Le Doux Road on the west and Gregory Way at the north. The structure was designed and planned by Salisbury, Bradshaw & Taylor. With its surrounding of trees, lawns, flowers and shrubs placed according to carefully devised landscaping plan, the place has the appearance of a beautiful park and, especially on the south side, lends itself to such purpose for visitors. Seymour Thoma, landscape architect, prepared the landscaping plans and the work is under inspection of George V. Chapman, Superintendent of Parks and Parkways at Beverly Hills, it was stated. A $400,000 bond issue, sanctioned at the election in Beverly Hills last Monday, will provide for installing two recreation parks, Mr. Chapman said. One will be located across the street to the east of the water plant and will occupy a site about ten acres, having La Cienega Boulevard, Country Club Drive and Gregory Way as its boundaries, it was announced. It will be equipped with tennis courts, baseball diamond, playgrounds, wading pools and other recreational facilities, Mr. Chapman said. The other contemplated park is to be located on a sixteen-acre site facing Country Club Drive on the south and Linden Drive on the east, it was stated. Mr. Chapman will supervise their installation.
These are some excerpts from another LA Times article about the fight to save the building:
(Nov. 16, 1986)
-Admirers of an abandoned waterworks in La Cienega Park in Beverly Hills hope to save the Spanish-style building despite plans to wreck it to make way for new athletic fields. "It's part of our heritage in the city," said Pauline Stein, chairwoman of the city's Architectural Commission. "I think it could be rehabilitated and there could be some adaptive re-use of the building."
-The concrete building, completed in 1928 at a cost of $147,882.73, was the first municipal water treatment plant on the West Coast, according to a study conducted for the American Society of Civil Engineers.
-Designed to resemble a Spanish Colonial hacienda, its cathedral-like rosette window, flying buttresses and 130-foot-high, Moorish-style tower have led generations of passers-by to believe that the structure is a church. In fact, the gray concrete walls and red tile roofs hide a warren of laboratories, treatment rooms and settling tanks that have fallen into disrepair since 1976, when the city began taking all its water from the Metropolitan Water District, a regional agency.
-"I think we need the open space {soccer fields} more," Salter said. "This is not to say that stuff with historical meaning shouldn't be saved, but I don't believe this is of that nature." (I'm really glad you were wrong, Mr. Salter)
-Although the building's southern end, where water was once sprayed into the air as part of a process to remove hydrogen sulfide from it, shows severe damage, the rest of the waterworks appears to be in good shape, said John Kariotis, a consulting structural engineer. He said the hydrogen sulfide weakened the concrete and exposed the steel reinforcing bars to rust.
-Built at a time before water was available from outside the city, the water treatment plant was designed to reduce the high concentration of dissolved solids in Beverly Hills ground water and to counter the characteristic "rotten eggs" odor caused by hydrogen sulfide. Once the chemical was recovered through the aeration process that damaged the southern end of the building, it was heated over a small oil stove at the base of the tower so that it would rise and dissipate into the atmosphere instead of wafting into neighboring homes.
-A recent visit to the abandoned structure found graffiti on virtually every inch of wall space, testimony to the visits of intruders who are periodically rousted by police.
-Despite that, and despite the plans that call for new tennis facilities and a field for baseball and soccer on the site, the unique qualities of the building should be taken into account, said Albert Hoxie, a retired architectural historian at UCLA. "It's good architecture and it's a good example of the period in which Beverly Hills flourished, that early great era of growth when they still had money to spend on things that were well done, and we're not going to get a lot more of that," he said. "Things are being torn down with such speed in Beverly Hills that if we don't start saving some things we're going to be in trouble."