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The courtyard at Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach is a pleasant place to while away a summer afternoon.
Covered by neatly trimmed grass, the 120-by-60-foot yard contains palm trees, orange trees and a bird of paradise plant. Near its center, a quiet reflecting pond plays host to a family of goldfish. And leading to a large glassed sun patio at one end, the seemingly endless white plastered walls bespeak the casual elegance of a bygone era.
Within those walls, however, lurks a potential danger that could result in the radical alteration of everything familiar the courtyard holds.
The culprit is moisture. Unable to escape through the plastered cement that coats the facility's original adobe walls, engineers say, water is literally being sucked up from the ground into the interior wall, causing severe deterioration that has already resulted in visible cracks and major crumbling. Unless something is done, the engineers say, the ranch house-built in 1844 and designated as a national, state and local historical landmark-may become a structural hazard.
To solve the problem, employees of the city, which has owned and administered the site since 1956, have devised a drastic plan. Remove the exterior plaster cement so that the adobe can breathe, they say. And, in the process, make dramatic structural changes that would return the rancho to its original historical condition circa 1870 when it was a thriving sheep ranch with primitive dirt floors and flat tar roofs.
Early Type of Construction
The changes also would greatly enhance the rancho's educational value and visitor appeal, they argue. Because the project would rely on earlier, simpler forms of construction, they say, it would cost less than preserving the site as it now exists.
But it would also virtually undo a major 1931 renovation performed by the Bixby family, the site's former owners whose history is inexorably tied to that of the city and the rancho. That renovation preserved the facility for posterity, transforming Rancho Los Cerritos from a dilapidated ranch house to the elegant 1930s mission revival style of home that visitors now see. And the specter of reversing it has raised eyebrows.
"I don't think it's appropriate," said Llewellyn Bixby, 81, who remembers living in the house as a young man during...