Razing of Museum Is Halted by Court : Architecture: Temporary order stops demolition at Science and Industry complex. State says it should continue because project has been going on for two months.

As morning turned to afternoon Friday, the bulldozers stopped work at the Museum of Science and Industry.

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Word had come from Sacramento that a temporary restraining order had been issued to stop the further demolition of the historic Ahmanson Building, that it’s fate would now have to be settled in court.

The razing had been going on for more than two months. Almost all of the back side of the building, a slice adjacent to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, had already been torn down and there was a gaping hole in one wall where a wrecker’s ball had left its mark. In the morning, earthmovers pushed dirt around the site where part of the building had once stood. All of the roof was gone and only steel girders remained.

A coalition of preservationists and two Northern California state senators made their move Thursday, when they filed a lawsuit in Sacramento asking a Superior Court judge to halt demolition.

A hearing was set for Tuesday morning in Sacramento to determine what will happen next. Lynn Bryant, president of the Society of Architectural Historians--one of the plaintiffs in the suit--said she hoped that at least three walls of the building could be saved.

But a deputy attorney general said Friday that the state would fight the work stoppage on the basis that too much of the building has been torn down for any court action to make a difference.

“The demolition has been going on since November,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Ramon de la Guardia.

Even Bryant said the lawsuit was filed later than it should have been.

“Everybody just sat back and sat back and watched and waited,” she said.

De la Guardia said any further court action could hurt fund-raising efforts by the museum, which is in the middle of a major expansion project. “The consequences of delay are rather drastic,” he said.

The project has provoked controversy since its inception. Last year, it was the center of a major legislative fight that pitted politicians from Southern California against those from Northern California.

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At issue in that fight was whether money earmarked to repair damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake was being used improperly to fund the museum’s expansion.

The controversy surrounding the project dates to 1990, when the Ahmanson and the neighboring armory were closed after inspectors determined that earthquake damage had rendered them unsafe. At the time of the closure, planners were putting together a master plan for Exposition Park--across the street from USC--where the museum is located.

Four months after the closure, voters passed a bond act in response to the Loma Prieta quake. The bonds were meant, in part, to fund repair of several state buildings in Oakland and San Francisco.

But the act did not specify Northern California, and museum officials hit upon the bond issue as a major source of funding for the demolition and expansion. In 1992, legislators passed a bill giving $45 million of the earthquake funds to the Museum of Science and Industry.

But last summer, the north-south fight broke out, with Bay Area legislators saying Southern California was making off with money it did not deserve.