Historic L.B. House on Abyss : Tichenor Residence Faces Demolition, Unless . . .

By DARYL KELLEY

Dec. 15, 1985 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

LONG BEACH — “Get out,” the bag lady squawked as she cradled a carton of milk between her knees on a brick side porch of the historic Tichenor House.

Her breakfast halted, the old woman pulled a tattered blanket to her chest and scooted away, leaving the 1904 residence to its owner, Gary Neville.

Perched on a bluff’s edge overlooking San Pedro Bay, the house was once a center of proper Long Beach society. But now, occupied only by a security guard and transients drawn to the shelter of its wide eaves, the Tichenor House is threatened with demolition.

Neville, a Santa Monica businessman, must soon decide what to do with the two-story home, impeccably crafted by internationally known architects Charles and Henry Greene.

Ready to Give House Away

And Neville, who was trained as an architect, said he is prepared to give the house away to anyone who will move and restore it. He added, however, that it will cost at least $250,000 to move.

The house sits on a prime Ocean Boulevard site that developers are anxious to buy, Neville said. He was offered $2.5 million last year for the one-third acre just east of downtown and next to the condemned Pacific Coast Club, he said. And developers with plans for condominium towers on the combined Pacific Coast Club and Tichenor sites now call almost daily.

“In six months, I don’t think this house will be here,” Neville said as he showed off its fine detail--a famous hand-sculpted copper clock, two remaining stained-glass windows, moveable interior walls, green Oriental roof tiles and ceramics, exterior brick in alternating textures and herringbone patterns, and thick, interconnected beams joined with wooden dowels.

“The biggest sin of all would be to let it hit the wrecker’s ball,” he said. “It’s small enough that a heritage society or university or special-interest group could have the building successfully relocated. It can be saved.”

Neville, 43, a restaurant owner and real estate developer, said he still hopes he can figure out how to relocate the Tichenor as his private residence. But the 6,000-square-foot home, heavy with masonry, would cost too much for him to move.

Local preservationists, surprised by Neville’s offer to give the house away, say they are interested, even though the home’s interior has been greatly altered.

“There’s definite interest by this foundation in saving that residence, preferably on that site, but if not, then in keeping it in Long Beach,” said Douglas Otto, president of the 200-member Long Beach Heritage Foundation.

“We’ll rally our forces and see what can be done,” said Otto, an attorney. “It’s a very interesting Greene-and-Greene house that pioneered the Japanese influence on their style. It would be a tragedy if that building left Long Beach.”

The home is important not only because of its architecture, but because Adelaide Tichenor was so prominent locally, Otto said. (A 1923 history of Los Angeles County refers to her as the “Mother of Long Beach” because she helped found the city library system, founded the Tichenor Orthopedic Clinic for low-income children and worked in many civic organizations.)

The Tichenor House, however, has significance far beyond its place in Long Beach history, said Randell Makinson, author of two definitive books on the Greene brothers’ architecture.

“If it is moved and accurately restored, it will have international significance,” said Makinson. “If that house had not been changed, it would be a (national) landmark right now.”

Makinson is curator of the Greenes’ carefully restored Gamble House in Pasadena, which is one of six structures in Los Angeles County designated as landmarks by the Interior Department.

Charles and Henry Greene were among a handful of architects that pioneered the Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the century, Makinson said. The Greenes’ homes are the finest of that movement in this country and the best of the California Bungalow style, he said. Their homes were designed as total concepts that included the structure, its furnishings and landscaping, and craftsmanship was stressed in every detail, he said.

Long Beach’s other Greene-and-Greene home--the 1904 Jennie A. Reeve House, restored as a private residence at Pacific Avenue and Country Club Drive--showed some of the range of the young architects’ skill, Makinson said.

But the Tichenor House, completed in late 1905 after nearly two years of design and construction, was the first to bring out all of the brothers’ talents, he said.

“Mrs. Tichenor gave them full reign to design the whole interior. It was the pivotal house that thrust them as major figures internationally in the design of interiors,” he said.

Today, single pieces from those interiors fetch record prices at private auctions, surpassing even those paid for furnishings from homes by Frank Lloyd Wright, Makinson said. A desk from a Greene-and-Greene house in Pasadena brought $240,000 this year, and a chair $75,000, he said.

Restoring the Tichenor would be “one of the most exciting and important artistic endeavors I know of,” Makinson said.

The cost of moving the house, however, is a large hurdle, said the Long Beach Heritage Foundation’s Otto and others.

Harold Simkins, a city planner who has served as adviser to the City Council-appointed Cultural Heritage Committee, said Long Beach would suffer “a great loss” if the Tichenor House is destroyed. “But the city does not have the resources to engage in that particular kind of venture,” he said.

Rita Woodbury, chairwoman of the Cultural Heritage Committee, called the Tichenor restoration “a worthy project,” but added that “with such a magnitude of cost, it’s probably not a feasible project. Unless someone falls in love with the home and wants it for a residence, I don’t see how it’s going to be saved.”

Local preservationists--several small, loosely knit groups with no paid leadership--have had little recent success in saving the city’s landmark buildings, said Otto.

The ornate Jergins Trust Building, which heritage groups fought hard to save, is slowly being demolished to make way for a hotel tower. The Fox West Coast Theater is scheduled to be razed for another hotel, and the days of the Pacific Coast Club seem numbered.

City officials have expressed little interest in spending public money to preserve old buildings.

Still, Neville and Makinson said, one needs to look no farther than Pasadena to see how a city and a university can work together to save a historic home. Restoration and professional staffing of the Gamble House was underwritten by USC for many years, and the city still maintains the Gamble House grounds, Makinson said.

The City of Pasadena also has cooperated with the private Pasadena Heritage group on several projects, said Linda Dishman, a city planner. Last year, the city contributed $90,000 to a $500,000 relocation of a six-unit courtyard bungalow. The units were restored, then sold as condominiums, and the city got its money back, she said.

Neville said he will seek university funding. “As a university restoration project, it would be like an archeological dig,” Neville said. Under the direction of a professional, “the students could learn how to be masons” and study firsthand the careful designs of the original artisans.

Makinson, a part-time USC instructor, said a university restoration project can be incorporated into courses on historic preservation. A side benefit of USC’s involvement in the Gamble House restoration has been placement of two students a year as residents of the Gamble House, he said.

But restoration of Tichenor House need not be an educational or philanthropic project to be economically sound, Makinson said.

“Every dollar put into a Greene-and-Greene house returns tenfold if it’s done accurately,” he said. “So it is very feasible to restore it as a private residence.”

Though involved in a struggle to make the Gamble House self-sustaining, Makinson said he would be interested in assisting in a Tichenor House revival.

“I don’t think it would be difficult to restore,” he said. “The important things are there. The shell is there. And I know where some of the original stained glass is at. It can come back. I know where some of the original furniture is, and it can come back as a purchase or as a possible partial gift.”

If the house were saved and restored, it would become an international drawing card, Makinson said.

“It would be,” he said, “a gift to the world.”