Three years and $300 million since it began, the extensive seismic and architectural restoration of City Hall has restored the polish and pride to a one-of-a-kind civic gem

Every mayoral administration promises a new beginning, a way to restore the presumed faded grandeur of a city.

The next mayor of Los Angeles will at least be able to bask in some measure of restored pride, thanks to the $300 million facelift now being completed at City Hall.

As the first city workers return to the old L.A. City Hall this week and continue moving back in throughout the summer, they are going to see a vastly different building than the one they left three years ago as the project began.

While much of the attention and money during the three-year project has been on the seismic retrofitting of the earthquake-damaged building, it’s the painstaking restoration work to the 73-year-old structure that’s now in full swing.

Dozens of artisans are spending hours perched on scaffolds doing detailed paint work on the once-ornate ceilings of the City Council and Public Works chambers. Thousands of the original marble tiles, cleaned and polished, are being put back in place after being removed as part of the seismic retrofit. Even the elevator cabs are being restored with their original gold leaf and inlay work.

All of the work must be completed by Labor Day weekend, when a City Hall rededication ceremony will kick off celebrations for the city’s 220th birthday, on Sept. 4. From this week through Labor Day, 1,500 city employees will be moving back into the building, beginning with the Personnel Department on the 8th floor.

Light at the end of the tunnel

The restoration process has yielded some surprises.

In a long-forgotten warehouse in the bowels of the building, workers discovered the original rotating “Lindbergh Beacon” that crowned the building until World War II. The beacon was installed when the building opened in 1928 (the year after Charles Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight). President Calvin Coolidge originally turned it on by flipping a switch from the White House.

The beacon was taken down in 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor because of fear it would make City Hall a target for Japanese bombers. It is now in San Francisco being restored to its original condition and will be helicoptered into place atop the City Hall ziggurat later this summer.

“It was an incredibly good stroke of fortune that we found this,” said Ed Avila, executive director of Project Restore, the city entity in charge of the City Hall restoration. “And it was in pretty good condition, too.”

Avila said the rotating beacon will only be used for special occasions, since the klieg-style light it emits would overwhelm the adjacent flashing red-light beacons required by the Federal Aviation Administration to ward off approaching airplanes.

Similarly, the original 12-foot-tall chandelier that hung from ceiling of the third floor rotunda for some unknown reason taken down decades ago was found in three pieces in boxes last year. It’s now being reassembled and the extensive gold leaf and artwork adorning it is also being restored.

Returning city workers and the public will find other changes, too. The top two floors are being completely reconfigured into a reception hall with a grand staircase. The 27th floor, known as the Tower Room, had previously served as a reception hall with an outside observation deck. However, its only access point was a small elevator that can only hold four people; as a result, it was used sparingly.

Now, with the staircase ascending from the 26th floor, city officials expect to use the Tower Room much more frequently to entertain foreign visitors and other guests.

Original palate returns

Beyond the structural changes, the building will have a completely different feel to it.

Back will be the Art Deco pastels that dominated the walls when City Hall first opened in 1928, but were gradually painted over with darker, more somber colors. The building also has elements of Moderne and Romanesque architecture, which also tend to emphasize the use of light colors.

“You are really going to feel a lighter and brighter glow when you go back in there,” said Kevin Jew, chief operating officer for Project Restore.

Actually trying to figure out the original colors was a challenging task for the specialized contractors restoring the building.

“We have a preservationist working for us who actually would go in and extract samples from the walls,” said Ray Kraves, project manager for Bethel, Pa.-based T.D. Patrinos Painting & Contracting Co. “Sometimes he had to go through four and five coats to get back to the original paint. Then we’ve been able to match the colors.”

Most of this delicate restoration work is being done on the second and third floors, which are the ones most frequently used by the public. The third floor contains the City Council chambers and the Board of Public Works hearing room, the two largest halls in the building. The third floor will also house much of the mayor’s staff. City Council offices are being consolidated on the fourth floor.

The outside of the building will have a lighter appearance, too. Over the years, dirt and grime have darkened the granite and terra cotta stone. All of that stone is now being washed and cleaned.

And visitors will notice a newly restored marble fountain on the south lawn, complete with a new bronze relief of former California Sen. Frank Flint. (He served in the early 1900s, and the town of Flintridge is named after him.) The original bronze relief was stolen back in the 1970s.

Like many public works projects, the renovation and restoration has not been without its unexpected costs.

Inside, one of the surprises that the restoration contractors discovered was the extensive damage to many walls and ceilings caused by three years of exposure to the outside elements during the seismic retrofitting phase of the project.

“The place has been empty for three years and windows have been left open or were broken,” Kraves said. “The extreme changes in temperature and humidity did quite a number on that old artwork. We estimate that resulted in us having to do about 30 percent more restoration work than we otherwise might have.”

Making the restoration job even harder has been the desire of project officials to make the restored building look not only of its period, but look its age.

“It would have been so much easier to strip everything down and just start fresh,” Kraves said. “But we were told to leave some of the dents in to give some sign of age and use, to give it an air of authenticity.”

Another painstaking task was the removing of thousands of marble tiles on floors and walls, mostly on the second and third floors and along the major staircases. The tiles were taken down to thicken the walls behind them as part of the seismic upgrades to the building. Each tile had to be numbered, inspected for damage and then stored in an off-site warehouse. They’ve been reinstalled over the last couple months. Many of the tiles have also had to be repaired.