Remaking a landmark

Don Webb stood on the roof of the Natural History Museum, poised to bore a 6-inch hole down through one of Los Angeles' grandest architectural landmarks.Dana Barthlomew in the Daily News.'

What the restoration engineer didn't know was whether the shaft drilled 35 feet through century-old brick would eventually help stabilize the historic north wing -- or shatter it into a million pieces.

"It could have broken. It could have blown out the wall," Webb said of that plumb test core of 2006. "It did not."