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Beautiful and vexing. An expensive piece of unfinished business.
That's what Frank Lloyd Wright thought of his architectural jewel, Hollyhock House, in 1921 after planting it atop a hill that sits like a 90-foot-high gumdrop stuck to the flat terrain of eastern Hollywood.
And beautiful, vexing, expensive and unfinished are what the house and its surrounding park have proved to be again. During the past two years, a small army of builders, architects, historical preservation experts and city bureaucrats has been striving -- sometimes contentiously -- to revitalize the neglected grounds and stabilize the dilapidated, earthquake-damaged house. That's twice as long as they expected the work to take. And the cost, $17.1 million, is 20% more than the $14.3 million that project's overseer, the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, had initially estimated.
The results are stirring to some who love Barnsdall Park and Hollyhock House, but even they feel strongly the sense of incompletion that seems to be the place's legacy or curse. The park is scheduled to reopen today, and the public can stroll the grounds to see what the first installment of a two-phase renewal project has wrought. An art show opens Wednesday in the gallery the city built near the house in 1971, and art classes will resume in the fall at the Junior Arts Center, added to Barnsdall in 1967.
But there is no guarantee that building inspectors will find Hollyhock House sufficiently safe and accessible to reopen for the guided tours that used to attract 60,000 visitors annually; Melvyn Green, the project's structural engineer, says the house is stronger now, and he sees no reason why tours can't resume. As for the second phase of the project -- needed to restore the still cracked and weathered-looking house to vintage condition -- it's not even on the drawing board yet. Not a cent has been secured to pay for the additional work, which the city has estimated at roughly $20 million or more for Hollyhock and a nearby, Wright-designed guest house.
People who return to the park at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue will be greeted by more than 400 newly planted olive trees. The driveways and walkways are lined by old- fashioned lamps decorated...