PLAZA NEARING HISTORIC LISTING
Preservation: State panel approves nomination to National Register of Historic Places
The Malaga Cove Plaza, a collection of Mediterranean Revival commercial buildings in the heart of Palos Verdes Estates, is one step from being recognized on the National Register of Historic Places.
The California State Historical Resources Commission approved the nomination to the national registry at its July 30 meeting. Next, the nomination is submitted to the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., for final review and listing by the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places.
For a property to be listed as a historic place, according to the National Park Service website, it must be at least 50 years old, still look the way it did in the past and be associated with lives of people who were important in the past. Significant architectural history, landscape history or engineering achievements are also considered.
The Malaga Cove Plaza met two of those criteria, according to the registration form prepared by Chattel Inc., a historic preservation consulting firm:
• The plaza was the work of notable city planner Charles Cheney and the landscape architecture firm Olmsted Brothers, led by John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., sons of notable landscape architect Frederick
Law Olmsted Sr.
• The plaza was developed between 1925 and 1964 and is an “excellent example of Mediterranean Revival architecture as applied to a continuous grouping of commercial buildings around a central plaza with fountain,” read the nomination papers.
The papers go on to laud Malaga Cove Plaza for retaining the majority of its original materials, “particularly on buildings including concrete foundations, brick and stucco cladding on exterior walls, terra cotta tile roofs, and both wood and metal windows.”
The plaza and surrounding grounds also retain original concrete sidewalks with brick borders. And even though the Neptune fountain has been repaired and refurbished many times, including a total replacement in 1969, it retains its original basin and pedestal.
The Malaga Cove Beautification Project, established in 1992 by Bob and Morynne Motley, hired Chattel Inc. to prepare the nomination paperwork.
The Motleys owned a building on the plaza and spent three decades and “significant resources” to improve the plaza, according to John Motley, their nephew and trustee of their estate. The couple left a perpetual endowment to help preserve the beauty of the plaza.
The endowment maintains the plaza’s trees, the Neptune fountain, the sidewalks and the curbing, Motley said at Friday’s meeting.
“So it helps to offset much of the cost the city would have to absorb,” said Motley.
Frank Vanderlip bought land on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the early 1920s and enlisted the help of Cheney and the Olmsteds to help create a master plan for the Peninsula.
“It’s an incredible example of city planning and Charles Cheney and Olmsted who … laid out the plans for the Peninsula and have basically created what we know of as the modern day Peninsula,” said Monique Sugimoto, archivist and local history librarian with the Palos Verdes Library
District, at Friday’s meeting.
In a phone interview this week, Robert Chattel, president of Chattel Inc., said he does not know how long it will take for the Malaga Cove Plaza to be officially designated a national historic landmark.
But, he said, when his company nominated the Edward and America Griffith House in Laguna Beach in January, it took about 45 days after the nomination by the state to be listed.
Being on the National Register of Historic Places not only would give Malaga Cove Plaza formal recognition for its historical significance, but according to the website, would provide opportunities for federal preservation grants and federal investment tax credits.