Look inside White Gates, famed Al Beadle home facing demolition amid calls for its preservation - Phoenix Business Journal
A midcentury marvel has fallen into disrepair. What responsibility should the new owner have to preserve it? A request to demolish an iconic midcentury Phoenix home designed by Al Beadle has sparked calls for increased protections for historic buildings in the Phoenix area. The home, White Gates, was purchased for $1.7 million by 4918 E White Gates LLC, a limited liability company incorporated in Delaware. The city of Phoenix’s Historic Preservation Commission will decide on whether the home should be demolished or have a historic overlay placed on the property. The current structure is unsalvageable and no longer represents the history of the site, according to Ben Graff, the property owner's attorney. Bailey is leading a coalition of business owners and other prominent figures in the Valley to create a more comprehensive policy around buildings that are at least 35 years old. Some of Bailey's proposals include providing a comprehensive plan to document and preserve the iconic buildings, reevaluating the demolition process for buildings over the age of 35 years, and increasing the demolition review periods.
Published : 4 weeks ago by Brandon Brown in Business
A request to demolish an iconic midcentury Phoenix home designed by famed architect Al Beadle has spurred a call to increase protections for historic buildings in the Phoenix area.
The home that incited this latest call to action is the so-called White Gates house near 44th Street and Camelback Road that Beadle designed and built for his family in 1958. It looks like a floating white rectangle at the base of Camelback Mountain.
The home was acquired in January for $1.7 million by 4918 E White Gates LLC, a limited liability company incorporated in Delaware, according to Maricopa County records. The city of Phoenix’s Historic Preservation Commission will decide during an April 15 meeting whether the nearly 3,000-square-foot home can be demolished, or if it should instead have a historic overlay placed on the property. If the overlay is placed on the property, city statutes allow the property owner to apply for demolition again in one year.
Ben Graff, the zoning attorney who represents the property owner, told the Business Journal that the owner plans on building a home for his family on the property and that the current structure – while significant because of the architect that built it – is practically unsalvageable.
"What is here truly no longer represents the history of the site," Graff said. "Everything has been subject to the elements and the structure is in really bad shape."
The debate over the preservation of White Gates has received an enormous amount of attention on both traditional and social media and has stimulated conversation about what role city halls should take in preserving older buildings and homes, especially those with particular architectural and cultural value.
The White Gates owner allowed the Business Journal on to the property to take photos. Click on the gallery below to see inside the home.
One of the loudest and most prominent voices weighing in on the preservation debate is Lauren Bailey, co-founder and CEO of restaurant group Upward Projects. Besides speaking out against the demolition of White Gates, Bailey is starting a coalition of business owners and other prominent figures in the Valley to work on creating a more comprehensive policy around buildings that are at least 35 years old.
“The architecture that is here in Phoenix is globally recognized as being incredibly special and incredibly influential to the overall architectural world. … The influence that Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Henry and all these guys have had over architecture globally is massive,” Bailey told the Business Journal. “I do not want to get on national news because we're tearing down globally recognized architecture in Arizona.”
Bailey has long promoted the Valley’s midcentury modern architecture. Several of her Postino restaurants in Phoenix are housed in historic buildings that her company renovated and retrofitted to be restaurants.
While Bailey is still in the early stages of creating a coalition and movement focused on updating Phoenix’s preservation rules, she has already talked with several figures that she said are “on board,” including folks at Greater Phoenix Leadership.
“There has to be a path to demo buildings in this town – I 100% agree with that – but there needs to be a path to preserve these buildings as well,” Bailey said. “I do believe that all the stakeholders – the developers, the preservationists, the community members – everybody can come together and say, ‘Here's what's important to me’ and then let's work it out. I’m a huge believer in finding a win-win in all these situations.”
Some of the Bailey's proposals include providing a comprehensive plan to document and preserve the iconic buildings from globally beloved architects, reevaluating the demolition process for all buildings over the age of 35 years, and increasing the demolition review periods. Those changes would bring Phoenix the same preservation standards implemented by many other U.S. cities, she said.
Why the property owner wants to tear down White Gates
Graff, the property owner's attorney, agrees with Bailey that the attention and passion around the White Gates home shows it is time for the community to come together and figure out how it wants the city government to consider historic buildings.
"I think this case will cause a conversation that needs to be had between the private landowner, community, property owners, the city and the historic preservation community," Graff said "It's a very unique example of something that's become so dilapidated."
While Graff said the new homeowner is sympathetic to and understanding of the historic preservation community, he said that the home is far from livable in its current state and would be a financial hardship if the homeowner were forced to renovate it.
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While the bright white, breeze block-esque panels on the front of the home are the most visible to the public, behind the panels the house has been completely gutted and exposed to the elements for more than 20 years. When the current owner acquired the property, the home was missing several windows and clearly had been neglected for decades, Graff said.
James Jones, the owner of JRJ Engineering and structural engineer hired to assess the current structure, pointed out several features of White Gates to the Business Journal that he said were problematic, from a deteriorated roof to rotten wood beams.
"You basically would have to reconstruct what is here to get it back to any type of livable situation," Jones said.
Before 4918 E White Gates LLC acquired the home, previous owners publicly stated that they wanted to renovate the historic house, but never did.
In 2002, the Business Journal reported that then-owner Don Dillon decided to sell the property after his plans to renovate and expand it received significant pushback from his neighbors. Dillon said at the time that he tried finding somewhere to save the house by moving it off the property, but was unable to do so. He said that he did not want to be the one to tear the White Gates house down, but "this house is toast."
From the time the home was acquired by Dillon to the present day, a carport for the home has been demolished and all landscaping, plants and trees have been removed.
"It is like a game of hot potato where our client legitimately purchased it in the private market and we're the ones in the current position to discuss the demolition," Graff said. "But it's been an ongoing topic by every prior property owner, and prior property owners have either avoided it or sold the land to avoid the exact conversation with the community."
Midcentury modern has many fans in Phoenix
"Its eligibility for the historic register should not be contingent upon its interior condition," said Alison King, an archivist, professor at Grand Canyon University and the founder and editor of the website and social media channel Modern Phoenix. "We'd like to see the street side facade preserved. We like to see the context preserved, including its placement on the site."
King was one of the first people to blow the horn on the demolition process of White Gates. Over the past decade or so, King has become one of the Valley's largest advocates for recognizing and preserving midcentury modern architecture. She said that the attention will could help make bigger changes and help preserve a form of Phoenix’s history.
“Al Beadle was part of that group of midcentury architects who relocated from different parts of our country and they came here for our beautiful climate, and I think that's very much a part of what inspired them – climate and landscape,” King said. “I urge the city and the business community to really come together and work out some processes that help us preserve the best of our city and to find informal and formal ways to curate the look and feel of our beautiful Valley.”
While King is all for making changes on a policy level, as well as educating the public about these styles of buildings and the importance of them to Phoenix’s history, she is also realistic about what an immediate solution could be for the White Gates home.
“The best-case scenario is that [the property owner] lets the property go and puts it back on the market so that somebody who does intend to preserve it will have an opportunity to fulfill that dream,” King said. “There's a line of people behind me who would absolutely love to purchase and restore that property.”