Lower Merion puts off demolition of 1929 mansion.

A Lower Merion Township panel put off a decision last night about whether to recommend demolishing La Ronda, the Spanish Gothic villa in Bryn Mawr designed in 1929 by Addison Mizner.

By delaying a vote until June 3, the Building and Planning Committee of the Board of Commissioners bought some time to consider what will happen to the 17,000-square-foot mansion.

Commissioner Philip S. Rosenzweig exhorted the public to come forward to form a public-private partnership to save the building.

"We need all of you to help us in that effort," he said. "La Ronda deserves to be preserved if we can see it through."

In mid-March, a limited partnership called 1030 Mount Pleasant Road, the house's address, approached the township. The buyer sought to raze La Ronda and build a 10,000-square-foot single family house in its place on 71/2 acres.

Rumors swirled this week on who is behind the partnership, but Lansdale attorney Joseph Kuhls would not identify his client, calling the identity "irrelevant."

"I cannot confirm or deny anything," he said. "I can only say that the property is owned by the limited partnership."

The news that the castle-like structure might be lost alarmed Main Line preservationists. They see the mansion as an irreplaceable example of Mizner's work, which came to symbolize the opulent lifestyle of Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Fla., in the 1920s.

Township preservationists, though, have been slow to safeguard the structure by relisting it as a Class I structure on the township's inventory of historic places.

Only a Class I building can be spared the wrecker's ball by a vote of the commissioners. La Ronda is a Class II building; the most the commissioners can do is delay the inevitable.

At last night's meeting, the commissioners voted to begin work on an amendment to reclassify La Ronda a Class I building.

It's unlikely that an amendment could be accomplished in the 90-day window available under township law.

When that window begins is unclear.

Members of the public who spoke last night begged the panel to save La Ronda from destruction.

"It's one of the shrinking number of great houses that epitomizes the Main Line," said Shawn Evans, from the American Institute of Architects. "To lose it would be unacceptable."

The mansion is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Karen Nagel, an architect and historian, said it is "an elegant mixture of styles. A property like this cannot be replicated. If I had to rank it, I would rank it the number-one most important building in Lower Merion."