The house known as La Ronda was one of the architect Addison Mizner's masterworks, and it is one of the few that retain most of their original detailing and much of their original character. It's a survivor from another era, a brilliant one, and is thought to be the only Mizner building in the Northeast. Mizner and Palm Beach are so closely entwined in the annals of architecture that any memory that he might have lived and worked elsewhere seems impossible. Yet he did, and even today, preservationists are racing the clock to save this wonderful, masterful house built on Philadelphia's Main Line in 1929.

Somehow, you'd think that this would be a house to cherish, one for scholars to study and lovers of architecture and history to extol. It's a full irony that it is in danger now, in an era when we have come to a much fuller appreciation of the architects of the Gilded Age and their opulent, eclectic, occasionally eccentric and always exquisite work.

Mizner (1872-1933) was one of the last of these. He spent the early part of his life in Central America, Spain, the Far East and California and later lived in New York. But Palm Beach was where he left his indelible imprint with a style that was particularly his -- in parts Spanish, Italian, Venetian, Moorish and, occasionally, pure invention.

His first Palm Beach building, The Everglades Club, set the stage, but not until the Philadelphia dowager Eva Stotesbury commissioned El Mirasol did Mizner's architectural vision for that resort city take full hold and -- as it was refined and adapted in Coral Gables, Morningside, Miami Shores -- eventually become the architectural style that would define Florida for much of the 20th Century.

Ironically, El Mirasol, as well as such other great Mizner houses in Palm Beach (Casa Bendita and Playa Riente among them), was demolished in the era before preservation laws were enacted, and even those offer inadequate protection at best. That was why the existence of an almost-intact Mizner house (those who have toured it say La Ronda retains its original tile and ironwork, stained glass, flooring, plaster and much more) came as such an extraordinary revelation. And why there is such profound disappointment in the possibility that, barring a near miracle, it, too, will be lost.

Early this year, a mystery owner (known only as 1030 Mount Pleasant Road L.P.) working through a corporate front and a lawyer bought the 51-room mansion and announced plans to demolish it. Like many private homes, La Ronda had never been given the legal classification to protect it (in Lower Merion Township, a building designated Class I cannot be demolished). But for La Ronda, which had only been designated a Class II historic resource, demolition could only be staved off for 90 days. The period ends Sept. 1.

REPLACEMENT MANSION

City officials do not know who the owners are, nor do preservationists, journalists or concerned citizens. All they know is what the owners' lawyers say, that, at 14,000 square feet, the house is too big and cannot be air-conditioned and that it will be replaced with a house more conducive to modern family life -- one of 10,000 square feet.

La Ronda was Mizner's last architectural commission. It was ordered up by Percival Foerderer, whose family fortune had come from the manufacture of shoe leather. By the time Foerderer selected Mizner, Lower Merion boasted houses belonging to some of the memorable names of commerce and finance -- Strawbridge, Clothier, Pew, and other entrepreneurs who have since faded to obscurity.

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