I always tell people, when walking downtown – look up! There are amazing things to see. While dress shopping on Saturday, I had to stop and take a closer look at this building. With so much cacophony on the street, it’s easy to miss even a building of this size. 
As you can see, most of the area is much lower buildings. So this Beaux Arts and it’s neighbor the Bendix building do stand out.
This is a photo from the 1930s. You can see there was retail on the ground floor even then and across Pico Blvd, no high construction. This was really the outer limits of downtown, from here on there would be other tall buildings, but many more low warehouse and small industry.
As the fashion industry rapidly expended here, the owners are doing just fine renting out large loft style space. They also set about spicing up the lobby.
You can see the wonderful old elements that haven’t changed, the marble wainscoting, the wonderful mail box. In 2010, they brought in the artist Andre Miripolsky to add some vibrant color. Boy did he ever.
I love how he worked around the old elements, the clock, The grill.
Wonderful old elevator doors. I was able to see into the elevator but not snap a picture. It looked like the original paneling – no fancy materials but nicely decorated wood. And there is an elevator operator – which leads me to think – they haven’t updated this elevator to standard push button yet. Now there is a job you don’t see often, although I’ve seen other buildings downtown with one.
It was hard to isolate out an image like this, so much stuff on all sides. This is the balcony over the Lobby entrance, also, the end of the fire escape.
On a busy shopping trip, I’m sure this restaurant does good business. I love the cocktail sign, I think it was from a previous business. I’m pretty sure there are manufactories upstairs, they have wide open loft space, although this business looks more like a design studio.
Next door is another very interesting building. The Bendix building. I shot this image from the rooftop garage across the street where we parked.
This building was build in 1930. The tower was built by Bendix Aviation Corporation manufactured to aid in nighttime aviation. The entire sign stands 150 feet tall; the letter “B” alone is 25 feet tall and 16 feet wide. This helped light the way to an airfield in Glendale, 9 miles away. Three years ago the tower was restored and the neon is now lit again at night.
In the 1930’s this building was used to manufacture automotive parts, navigation instruments and car parts. The fashion industry moved in much later.
Leah