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Fifteen years ago, USC's School of Architecture took on the task of restoring one of Frank Lloyd Wright's concrete block residences, the Freeman House, which the celebrated architect designed in 1924 for a young avant-garde couple. The house was bequeathed to the university in 1983, three years before its original owner, Harriet Freeman, died there.
Today, the house is a conspicuous object of neglect. Standing at a tight turn on Glencoe Way in the Hollywood Hills, Wright's creation looks ominously fragile: Along the facade, concrete blocks are cracked or have crumbled away. Wood supports brace the fragile exterior side walls. A heavy canvas tarp is propped, tent-like, over the roof--a necessary prophylactic because the structure leaks. It is a depressing sight.
The Freeman House's current state stems largely to problems revealed when the building was damaged during the 1994 Northridge earthquake--damage that has not been repaired due to a disagreement between the school and the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the scope and cost of much-needed structural work. Last June, FEMA offered the school more than $850,000 to rebuild the house's underlying structure and to bring the building up to current seismic codes. But the university won't accept the money because it fears that it might not be enough to complete the job.
Late last year, the dean of USC's School of Architecture, Robert H. Timme, approached the Getty Conservation Institute with the hope that the cash-rich nonprofit would become a partner in the restoration effort. The Getty has responded with some interest, but for now has only tentatively scheduled a meeting for next month to discuss appropriate conservation techniques and possible future uses for the house if it is saved.
Meanwhile, the clock still ticks. The house has stood empty since last August, when its resident director, Jeffrey Chusid, who had been on the faculty of the USC School of Architecture, moved out after 12 years to take a job at the University of Texas at Austin. The concrete blocks and reinforcement bars that make up the house's structural frame continue to crumble and rust. Neighbors--who say they have waited more than a decade without any visible improvements to the house--complain regularly that the building is an eyesore and that the school has done...