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Doc X. Nghiem has spent more than a year being enchanted by the beauty and originality of Frank Lloyd Wright's 1921-vintage Hollyhock House. But as the man immediately responsible for fixing some of the historic building's flaws and shoring up its points of vulnerability, he also knows its ability to frustrate.
Now, Nghiem and the workers who have been laboring to plug leaks, remove mold, replace rotted wood and deal with corroded drainpipes are almost ready, after a five-year closure, to let the public back inside the city-owned house-on-a-hill near Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. Among the highlights are a magnificent living room with a fireplace edged by a moat and topped by a Modernist bas- relief, some Wright-designed furnishings and lots of geometrical stained glass.
Touch-ups and termite eradication are all that remain to be done, and Nghiem expects the house to be ready next month. The city's Cultural Affairs Department, which operates Hollyhock House and the surrounding Barnsdall Art Park, will reopen it for guided tours as soon as possible, said Margie Reese, the department's general manager, even if that means holding off on a more formal reopening celebration. Visitors will enter in groups of no more than 15. "It's a treasure, and it'll be a high-profile facility for us," said Reese.
Hollyhock House, with its expansive views, architectural references to ancient Mayan structures and decorative spires and friezes representing the original owner's favorite flower, the hollyhock, was closed in 2000 with the rest of Barnsdall Park.
Over the next three years, the city spent $16 million, according to former project manager Willis Yip. Most of the money went toward an overhaul of the landscaping to beautify the site and make the hilltop park's 90-foot-high embankments less vulnerable to soil erosion and earthquakes. Damage to Hollyhock House from the 1994 Northridge earthquake was repaired in that "phase one" project, and its roof and those of two other Wright-designed structures, a garage and a guest house, were strengthened against future quakes. The park reopened in June 2003, but the house remained closed to the public.
Nghiem, a structural engineer with the city's Bureau of Engineering, took...