Preservation Efforts get Boost from Getty

LOS ANGELES-”Preserve LA” grants totaling $100,000 have been awarded by the J. Paul Getty Trust Grants Program to the Los Angeles Conservancy on behalf of Downtown’s Historic Core and to a foundation planning to convert the Italian Hall on Olvera Street into a museum.

The Conservancy received $65,000 to draw up preservation guidelines for property owners and builders in the Historic Core. The Italian Hall Foundation was the recipient of $35,000 to draft plans for restoring the building, once an important community center for LA’s Italian-American community, into an Italian-American museum.

The Historic Core grant area includes the Historic Core District, which consists of two adjacent National Historic Register Sites: The Broadway Historic Theater District and the Spring Street Historic Financial District. Bounded by Third, Hill, Ninth and Main streets, the Core district includes the Bradbury Building and much of the south end of Downtown.

The three-story brick Italian Hall, at the northwest end of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, was built in 1908. It will use its $35,000-grant to hire IQ Magic museum designers to draft the museum plans. The project’s cost is estimated at $1.6 million, says Gloria Ricci Lothrop, chairwoman of the Historic Hall Foundation.