Preservation Alert: Fickett Designed West Hollywood Park Coming Down Fast

The Edward H. Fickett, FAIA designed Mid-Century Modern  located 645 N. San Vicente Blvd. is on its way to destruction. And as continue to plow away at Phase I of the park's master plan, I ask myself and others how the City of West Hollywood can justify the demolition of all the buildings that make up the campus of the West Hollywood Park?

Edward Fickett designed 37 buildings in the West Hollywood area, including residential, commercial and institutional buildings. After his passing in 1999 at the age of 83, his wife Joycie Fickett collaborated with the City of West Hollywood to designate these historical buildings in order to provide his work a continued legacy.

Juxtaposed against the almost completed RED Building and the rest of the  scariness, across the street sits a true work of art and thoughtfulness that is very befitting of the noted architects of the Mid-Century.

Take the library ceiling. The amazing angles of the ceiling are striking and acoustically sound. The next time you are inside the library, look at how the triangular windows allow minimal diffused light into the space.

Even the pool house is wet with California Modernism. The cut-outs and geometrics exemplify the style of the movement. There were many eco-friendly treatments done to the structure when Fickett conceived of the park. 

Check out the continuous roof line of the park office structure and the community center structure. The are some amazing architectural details in the breezeway area between these two structures joined together by one roof and cut-outs in the interior staircase area. 

You will find most architects of the Mid-Century Modern period being fairly "green" with their approach to design. Oddly enough, the city and community applauded the new design in 2008 when revealed, as it had LEED written all over the plans while "green" was building steam in the development community, especially those structures with a civic nature.

It just so happened during the last MODCOM general meeting, the issue of the West Hollywood Park came up. It seems that not only did the LA Conservancy and the City of West Hollywood's Historic Preservation Commission not raise an eyebrow, but the community at large seems not to care about the razing of Fickett's Post WWII community park. 

When all's said and done, the city will have a brand spankin' new eco-friendly park, only to have razed a historical and relevant compound of Mid-Century Modern architecture. As I always say to folks, you can't put architecture into a museum.  

Perhaps I sit alone and think there should be more of an outcry over this issue?

NOTE:  Since posted on Modern Homes LA, the LA Conservancy cannot determine as to whether the full park or just the library was designed by Edward Fickett.