City Council to Decide Halliburton House Fate in Rare Morning Session

In a special meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning, Wednesday, at 9 a.m., the Laguna Beach City Council will decide whether or not to rescind the stop-work order they issued last week regarding the interior renovation of the historic Halliburton House in South Laguna, located at 31172 Ceanothus Drive.

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New owners purchased the modernist home last December for a reported $2.4 million. A work crew recently began renovating the interior and was in the process of removing floors, walls and fixtures when neighbors became aware of the jackhammering and other construction activities being done on what some in Laguna Beach consider to be one of the most architecturally important buildings in the city.

Those neighbors alerted City Hall, which it turned out had issued a permit for the removal of the house's concrete floor, but there were concerns that the work was going beyond what was permitted.

Hence, last week's stop-work order, which the council voted in favor of, 4-1.

Local preservationists believe that any remodel of the house must be reviewed by the city's Heritage Committee, among other issues.

The house, commissioned by adventurer Richard Halliburton and built by architect William Alexander Levy in 1937—also known as the Hangover House, partially because of all the parties it once hosted—is reputed to have been the inspiration for the fictional Heller House that appears in Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead.