Gamble House

With its dark Burma teak paneled walls, Douglas fir beams, white oak floors and Port Orford cedar porches, the 86-year-old Gamble House carries out what its admirers call "a symphony in wood."

A great interior has unique personality and charm. It is so unique unto itself that it offers visitors a distinct sense of place. --Daryl de Falla President, American Society of Interior Designers, Los Angeles Chapter And you thought an interior was a place inside a place? Next time that Southern California weather turns too 1) hot, 2) cold, 3) wet, 4) sunny, 5) foggy or 6) smoggy--or any combination thereof--consider exploring some of L.A.'s Great Indoors. Rex Il Ristorante: 617 S.

Sheriff's investigators are looking into whether the management of the Huntington Park Casino committed grand theft by under-reporting gambling profits and by assigning a casino employee to work for another business, according to an affidavit filed in court Thursday. Those actions could constitute grand theft because the limited partners of the casino would not have received their fair share of revenue from the card club, a sheriff's investigator said in an interview.

Architects Charles and Henry Greene disdained the cookie-cutter houses and mass-produced furnishings of the machine age. What earned the turn-of-the-century Pasadena artisans their worldwide reputation was their break with tradition and their functional yet elegant furniture that typified the "California" lifestyle. Until now, the work of the Greenes could be glimpsed only rarely, during tours of old homes.

When two USC students make the move from frat house to Gamble House, a few lifestyle adjustments are inevitable. Since Arnold Swanborn, 24, and James Lord, 23, took up residence in the venerable house last August, they have: * Dodged some of the 190 volunteer docents who each year lead 30,000 tourists through the home; * Been startled by people peering in the ground-level windows of the house's basement studio workroom; * Caught someone filching fish from the back-yard pond last Christmas.

For Gamble House docent Jeanette Thomas, the 81-year-old Craftsman home is more than an artful creation of hand-sanded wood, Tiffany glass, inlaid tiles and pressed brick. "It borders on the mystical, the feeling I have for the house, and I'm not a mystic," said Thomas, 68, a retired high school and college teacher. To explain her feelings, Thomas began writing a book illustrating the major design themes she noticed in the house while leading nearly 1,000 tours.

When Nina Kirby went into labor for the birth of her daughter, Katherine--now 7--there were workmen plastering her Pasadena house with such feverishness that her husband, John, shuttled between the workers and her bed, overseeing both simultaneously. "They were very concerned," Dr. John Kirby, a plastic surgeon, recalled of the plasterers. "They'd been here so long, we felt they were such a part of our childbirth."