Plant Makes Comeback as Film Library

It was a more likely candidate for the wrecking ball than a film industry showcase, a building so broken-down and neglected that it could have played the role of a bombed-out cathedral.

This week, the historic Beverly Hills Waterworks building will be the site of quite another type of film scene when it reopens as the new home for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Center for Motion Picture Study.

The academy spent nearly three years and $6 million to remodel the former municipal water treatment plant to transform it into the new home for one of the largest film collections in the world.

The center houses the major collections of such film legends as Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Mary Pickford, Hal Wallis and Fred Zinnemann. The 32-member staff, which has moved in during the past several weeks, maintains 5 million photographs, 18,000 books and periodicals, 12,000 films and 5,000 scripts. The library contains almost every tome written on film in the English language.

Including the wing added to the original structure, the 40,000-square-foot building is nearly four times the size of the old study center at the academy’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters. It allows the academy to store all of its film-related materials under one roof for the first time.

“It all seems very fortuitous,” said Linda Harris Mehr, director of the Margaret Herrick Library, the research center’s showcase. “Here is a building designed to process water, but the way it was constructed seemed to fit our needs so beautifully that if we had started from scratch with all the money in the world, I’m not sure we could have come up with a better place.”

The praise being showered on the waterworks plant is more remarkable when one considers that a few years ago, the Spanish Colonial Revival-style structure was getting reviews reminiscent of “Heaven’s Gate.”

Abandoned in 1976, the building at La Cienega and Olympic boulevards had become a favorite target for vandals and self-styled graffiti artists. The hydrogen sulfide in the water that was once purified there ate away at the concrete and exposed the steel reinforcing bars. Sand covered the floors.

In 1987, 60 years after the building designed by Arthur Taylor opened as the first municipal water treatment plant on the West Coast, Beverly Hills City Councilman Maxwell Salter pronounced the waterworks a “monstrosity.” The building was targeted for demolition by the City Council, but was spared when a Superior Court judge ordered the city to prepare an environmental impact report.

The delay allowed preservationists to push ahead with demands for more studies, one of which suggested that the concrete structure might be used as a theater, museum, restaurant, sports facility or aquarium.

That is when Hollywood entered the picture. Desperate for a new home to hold its ever-expanding collection, film academy officials toured the aging building. Where others saw decay, the academy members saw stars.

“There is something vaguely theatrical about it that is very appealing to academy members,” said Bruce Davis, academy executive director. “We think it’s nice that a building which houses an organization whose functions are devoted to the preservation of this art form could also serve as an example of preservation of an architectural art form.”

The City Council, buoyed by the academy’s interest, made a dramatic turnaround. A negotiating team led by then-Mayor Benjamin H. Stansbury and the once-recalcitrant Salter cut a deal to lease the building to the academy for 55 years. The terms: $1 million up front, plus $500 a month for the duration of the agreement.

“The fact that I was opposed to it originally and then supported it later gave the deal a lot of credibility,” Salter said. “I honestly believed that it was an attractive nuisance and that some kid or vagrant might kill himself by falling out of the building. But I’m glad we had time to debate it because it’s turned out to be a beautiful addition to the city.”

The restoration work was left in the hands of architect Frances Offenhauser, a specialist in rehabilitating historic buildings. The large amount of open space allowed Offenhauser to keep the interior almost intact. The vandalized exterior needed to be restored.

“I take pride in the fact that we built almost no new walls,” Offenhauser said. “We were fortunate in that we were able to adapt each space to an appropriate use, even though what the academy inherited basically was a concrete shell.”

Offenhauser said that because the heavy concrete structure was designed to hold water up to the fourth floor, it was heavy enough to support the academy’s weighty archives. One of the building’s former water filtration wings now houses the Herrick Library. A onetime aeration chamber contains the academy’s special collections. Water storage chambers on the bottom floor are filled with private film holdings donated by the likes of Cary Grant and George Stevens. Other concrete-enclosed container rooms are temperature-controlled and used to preserve the organization’s movie collection.

Herrick Library, which is open to the public, is lined with top-lit, birch bookshelves. The adjacent reading room is dominated by a hexagonal table once owned by fashion designer Edith Head. The building’s trademark rosette window and 130-foot Moorish-style tower have been restored to their original glory with the help of old photographs.

“There was a time when people felt that public buildings were a major component to beautifying a city, and that was the case here,” Offenhauser said. “We just tried to enhance what was there, to take the existing spaces and civilize them.”

The academy, which is in the midst of preparing for its annual awards show, will spend four days this week showing off its new research center to film industry members and other guests. The first celebrity bash will be held Wednesday night. The study center will open to the public Monday.

“Even though we have one of the great film archives in the world, (the study center) has been a low-key aspect of the academy’s work because we haven’t had the room to find the proper role for it,” Davis said. “This is an important step for us because it not only increases the library’s visibility, but also our ability to function as a complete research center.”