It was the cool place to hang out in Los Angeles a century ago -- a gathering spot for the likes of artist Frederic Remington, conservationist John Muir, composer John Philip Sousa and poet Carl Sandburg.
These days the landmark Lummis House in Highland Park is more of a cold place to be stuck in.
A leaky roof and sponge-like rock walls are turning the unusual museum that celebrates early Los Angeles into a dank and moldy place that local historians say has become unfit to work in.
Lack of heat is forcing the Historical Society of Southern California to "furlough" staff members who for decades have conducted public tours of the old house and used it as their headquarters.
Rainstorms flooded the home's main display hall and caused its plastered walls to bubble and split.
Conditions are so poor in the furnace-less structure that employees and volunteers wear heavy coats and huddle around plug-in heaters as they work on society publications and programs and book the tours that draw thousands of history buffs and schoolchildren each year.
The house is owned by the city and has been designated both a Los Angeles historic-cultural monument and a state historical monument. The 1,200-member society leases it and helps with its maintenance. It also handles its day-to-day operations.
The house was built by hand between 1898 and 1910 by Charles Fletcher Lummis, a colorful author and newspaperman who was a tireless civic booster of the American Southwest and, in particular, Los Angeles.
Lummis was famous for walking from Ohio to California in 1885 to take a job as the first city editor of the Los Angeles Times. Along the way, he wrote dispatches for the paper about his 143-day transcontinental jaunt. The hike took him through New Mexico and turned him into a lifelong devotee of Indian and Spanish culture.
Lummis constructed the sprawling, L-shaped residence at 200 E. Avenue 43 from smooth river rocks he had gathered from the nearby Arroyo Seco. Recycled Santa Fe railroad ties and telegraph poles were used for framing and for the roof. It was designed to showcase Lummis' growing collection of artifacts of the West.
The finished house was part British castle and part Spanish hacienda. A circular turret stands at one end, anchoring a 2-foot-thick stone-faced concrete wall that had the look of an early California mission. It features concrete floors, built-in cabinets, numerous fireplaces, and tiny doors just big enough to accommodate the 5-foot-7 Lummis. The cold floors, in fact, were a factor in Lummis' divorce from his second wife, Eve.
