the modernist's guide to iconic wilshire boulevard - CicLAvia

THE MODERNIST’S GUIDE TO
ICONIC WILSHIRE BOULEVARD
Free downloadable
podcasts highlighting
the unique history
of Wilshire Boulevard
available at:
ciclavia.org/podcasts

Major support for CicLAvia—Iconic Wilshire Boulevard
has been provided by the Getty Foundation.
CicLAvia PArtners
CICLAVIA SUPPORTERS
Goldhirsh Foundation
Rosenthal Family Foundation
The California Endowment
Pirelli Tires
Los Angeles County
Bicycle Coalition
Wasserman Foundation
David Bohnett Foundation
REI
Designed by Colleen Corcoran
Printed by Indie Printing
© CicLAvia 2013
CicLAvia sponsors
The Ratkovich Company
Millennium Hollywood
Los Angeles Department of
Water & Power
Ralphs
Sport Chalet
Tern Bicycles
Honorable Zev Yaroslavsky
Ludlow Kingsley
Indie Printing
media PARTNERS
KCRW 89.9
Laemmle Theatres
CicLAvia is a series of car-free, open
streets events that temporarily
transform select Los Angeles roadways
into innovative public spaces
for all to enjoy.
For a few hours on a Sunday, Angelenos are
given the opportunity to experience new
neighborhoods by foot, bike, rollerblades,
skates or other forms of non-motorized
transport. CicLAvia connects diverse communities
and populations and underscores
the possibility of a more pedestrian, bike,
and public transit-friendly Los Angeles.
CicLAvia—Iconic Wilshire Boulevard is part
of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern
Architecture in L.A. This collaboration,
initiated by the Getty, is a celebration of
Southern California’s lasting impact on
modern architecture. It includes exhibitions
and accompanying programs presented
by seventeen area cultural institutions from
April through July 2013.

About the Podcast
As part of Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern
Architecture in L.A., CicLAvia offers a series of free
downloadable podcasts highlighting the unique history
of Wilshire Boulevard. Created by noted architectural
researcher and commentator Edward Lifson, the podcasts
present a series of stories that take the listener from
Wilshire’s humble beginnings more than a century ago
to its distinctive focus on the modern era, and all the
way to its present-day state of revival with a new subway
line, cutting-edge skyscrapers, LACMA’s radical new
campus, and so much more. A diverse group of Angelenos
share their dreams, challenges, failures and successes as
Lifson examines the forces that have and continue to shape
this iconic boulevard.
DOWNLOAD FROM: ciclavia.org/podcasts
The first CicLAvia on 10/10/10
Photo by Gary Leonard.

Wilshire Boulevard, one of the
oldest thoroughfares in the city,
is also the most dense and diverse.
Its namesake is Henry Gaylord Wilshire, an
eccentric “socialist-millionaire,” who subdivided
35 acres of land west of Westlake Park
(now MacArthur Park) in 1895. By the 1910s
and 1920s, wealthy Angelenos were moving
west to Wilshire. It soon became known for
its auto-oriented amenities (including the first
street lights and striped lanes) and high-rise
apartment towers. Dubbed the “Fifth Avenue
of the West,” it became known as the most
expensive street in LA. But by the late 1930s
its eastern section had transformed into the
epicenter for depictions of lost hope and
dashed dreams, entering the age of noir as
Raymond Chandler and filmmakers set cynical
scenes in the glow of rooftop neon along
Wilshire’s 3.5 mile illuminated corridor.
The focus of The Modernist’s Guide to Iconic
Wilshire Boulevard recognizes this past, but in
light of architectural developments from the
1940s to today. The urban space this CicLAvia
traverses has changed dramatically as the
result of shifting demographics, the impact
of car culture, new technologies, and the
demands of new forms of capital investment
and disinvestment. Overall, the era has been
marked by mobility: of people and money.
The postwar history of this stretch of Wilshire
has also been defined by community, where
multilayered histories of this place and its
many peoples (diverse in age, class, and
ethnicity) are what make it matter today and
offer up a new set of icons to LA history.
Change on Wilshire hasn’t always been
about replacement of the old with the new.
Sometimes previous layers are still visible,
though sometimes their remnants are largely
invisible. Calling out the buildings still standing
and the stories of people and places long
gone can still give us a deeper sense of place
and history.
— Catherine Gudis

1. ONE WILSHIRE/DOWNTOWN LA
Aerial view of downtown Los Angeles; the One
Wilshire building is in the foreground, 1975
Photo from the Herald Examiner, 1975.
Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

1 One Wilshire
Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, 1964
624 S. Grand Ave.
When this 30-story office tower was completed it
became the tallest building around, its verticality a
marker of soaring downtown property values. By
the mid 1980s, as businesses fled to the suburbs,
the building transformed into a “telecommunications
hotel”—a “palace of ether”—where space continues
to be leased for telecom, computing, and Internet
equipment and services.
2 General Petroleum/Pegasus
Walter Wurdeman and Welton Becket, 1949
731 Wilshire Blvd.
Named “Pegasus” for the Mobil Oil logo once on
top, this modern marvel showcases aluminum fin
sunshades, accordion-fold windows, and open
interiors. The building, now known as Pegasus
Apartments, was converted to apartments in 2001
through the City’s Adaptive Reuse Ordinance.
2. GENERAL PETROLEUM/PEGASUS
The largest office building in Southern California when
built at a cost of $11,000,000. Shown here shortly after
its completion, 1949 Photo from the Herald Examiner.
Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

3. 110 harbor freeway
Postcard showing the Harbor Freeway
through Downtown LA, c. 1960
3 110 Harbor Freeway
1952
Carving a submerged path through downtown,
the Harbor Freeway connected with the West’s first
freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway (1941) via the
“Four Level” (1949–53)—the first stack interchange in
the world. It also fixed a boundary between the old
eastern neighborhoods (including downtown) and
western LA, the new frontier of commerce and capital.
4 Alvarado
Spanning 6th St.—Wilshire Blvd.—7th St.
Though street peddling of everything from tamales
to newspapers has been intermittently banned in LA
since at least 1906, this eastern edge of MacArthur
Park has long been the center of the “geography of
getting by.” A robust trade in everything from tube
socks to second-hand goods to pupusas draws thousands
to the streets.
4. Paleta sellers
A view of two “Paleta” sellers with their
ice cream carts standing at the corner
of 9th Street near MacArthur Park, 1986
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

5 Westlake/MacArthur Park
5. MacArthur Park
Postcard showing Westlake Park
by moonlight, c. 1930
Westlake Park, created out of a mud pit and garbage
dump, became a civic attraction by the turn of the twentieth
century, and was ringed by grand structures serving
city elite by the 1920s and 1930s. The 1934 viaduct
connected Wilshire Blvd. to downtown, permitting car
travel right through the park. Yet by the time the park was
renamed for General Douglas MacArthur in 1942, the
area around it was already considered an investment risk
by federal housing agents that financed suburbanization.
The park and its surrounding neighborhoods shifted with
the times, serving diverse populations and orientations
by the 1950s and 1960s, the tens of thousands of Central
American immigrants fleeing civil wars and violence by
the late 1970s and 1980s, and as a central locale for social
services by the 1980s and 1990s, when it was also the hub
for the LA drug market and gangs.
Revitalization in decades since has come from the public
art program of the 1980s, the 1996 completion of the
Metro line, downtown’s renewed economic vitality, and
the conversion of commercial buildings into housing.
The park’s recreation center, soccer fields, and informal
economy of vending have restored its dense utilization.
The historic bandshell—originally built in1896, replaced in
1957, and a modern icon in part for hosting break dancers
and hip hop artists in the 1980s—was restored in 2007
and hosts regular concerts. Throughout this time, the park
has continued to host May Day gatherings and serve as a
rallying point for parades, strikes, and boycotts.

6 Westlake Theatre
Richard Bates, 1926; S. Charles Lee, 1936
636 S. Alvarado St.
The nearly 2,000-seat theater (operating until 1991)
broadcast its offerings with an intact three-story
neon sign. Bustling with activity as a swap meet, the
Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) purchased
the building in order to restore it; with the CRA’s disbanding,
future plans are not clear. On the southern
wall is a mural by Hector Ponce, Los Angeles Teachers
(1997), featuring Jaime Escalante and the man who
portrayed him in the movies, Edward James Olmos.
6. WESTLAKE THEATRE SIGN
Detail of rooftop neon sign
Photo by Aaron Paley.
7 Langer’s Delicatessen
Unknown architect, 1932 704 S. Alvarado St.
Al and Jean Langer opened their delicatessen in
1947 and it has been an LA institution since, now also
offering curbside service. Even by 1947, the Jewish
population, which had peaked in this area in the
late 1920s, was heading west or to the suburbs. Yet
the Langer’s continued to serve this neighborhood.
Langer’s still wins prizes around the world for its
mile-high, $14 pastrami sandwich, though as you
walk in you are more likely to hear Nuahuatl than
Yiddish spoken.
LANGER’S 7. DELICATESSEN
Entrance and sign on 7th Street
Photo by Aaron Paley.

8 Chouinard Institute of
the Arts/Korean New Times
Presbyterian Church
Morgan, Walls, and Clements, 1929
743 S. Grand View St.
Founded in 1921 as a progressive art school, it
merged in 1969 with Walt and Roy Disney’s CalArts,
and moved to Valencia. From 1972 until it became a
church in 1974, the Woman’s Building operated here.
In recent years Workers’ Meeting (1932), the first of
three controversial murals David Alfaro Siquieros completed
in LA, was discovered beneath layers of paint
in the church’s kitchen.
9 Radiotron
9. radiotron
Graffiti art decorates walls of the
community center, 1985
Photo from the Herald Examiner.
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.
Building no longer extant
715 S. Park View St.
Carmelo Alvarez ran the Youth Break Center at
Radiotron from 1983 to 1985, as a safe social space for
kids to breakdance, do graffiti, MC, and DJ. It became
the focal point for early hip hop culture on the West
Coast and center to the first Graffiti Art Crews in
LA. When the building was razed in 1985, activities
from the youth center moved to the bandshell in
MacArthur Park.

10 American Cement Building
DMJM, 1964
2404 Wilshire Blvd.
A dramatic use of concrete intended to promote
the American Cement company, the latticework of
two-ton cast concrete “X”s supports the building
from the outside, leaving interiors free of supporting
beams—great for the 71 live/work lofts now occupying
the space.
10. AMERICAN CEMENT BUILDING
On Park View looking toward Wilshire, 1960
Photo by Julius Shulman. Copyright J. Paul Getty Trust.
11 Otis Art Institute/Charles
White Elementary School
William L. Pereira, 1957
2401 Wilshire Blvd.
LA Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis built the
first residence on Wilshire Blvd. here in 1898, and
bequeathed it to the county for an art school in 1917.
The Otis Art Institute, which operated on this site
from 1918 until 1997, demolished the Otis residence
to create the school campus that still stands today.
Though acting as an elementary school since 2004,
the west wall still hosts a mural by Kent Twitchell,
The Holy Trinity (with TV stars from Lassie, The Lone
Ranger, and Father Knows Best used as models).

12 Elks Lodge/Park Plaza
Curlett and Beelman, 1925 607 S. Park View St.
Originally a private social hall for civic elite, this facility
had it all, including a pool, bowling alley, gym, and
169 hotel rooms. When membership dwindled in the
1960s, the building was sold, and served as a YMCA,
a retirement hotel, and a rental hall, where scores of
Angelenos remember it for events in the 1980s, from
quinceañeras to punk rock concerts. Now its ground
floors are refurbished and used for events and filming.
12. ELKS LODGE/PARK PLAZA
Exterior statues of angels appear on
every corner of the building
Photo by Aaron Paley.
13
Iconic Queer Culture
Park Theater
John S. Austin, 1914;
S. Charles Lee, 1935
710 S. Alvarado St.
14
Silver Platter
Unknown architect, 1923
2700 W. 7th St.
In 1968, films by Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Jack
Smith, and Pat Rocco—all using queer themes and
imagery—launched the cultural programming that
would make the Park one of the first commercial
theaters in the nation to openly present homoerotic
film fare. The Silver Platter, opened in 1963 by Rogelio
Ramirez, is likely the oldest continuously operating
gay bar in LA. It is the subject of a 2012 documentary
film, Wildness, by Wu Tsang. Other historic gay and
lesbian bars in the area (gone now) include the Brass
Spurr, Lakeshore, and Fallen Angel.

15 Lafayette Park Senior Citizen
Center/Lafayette Park
Recreation Center
Graham Latta, 1963; Stephen Kanner/Kanner
Architects, 2011 625 South Lafayette Park Place
Barrel-arched concrete canopies still define the
former senior center on the east side of Lafayette Park,
now augmented by 15,000-square feet of light-filled
classroom and gymnasium space. The center and the
park are anchored by HOLA (Heart of Los Angeles),
which provides underserved youth with programs
in academics, arts, and athletics and welcomes the
“regulars”—a mixed-age assortment of families, soccer
players, and vendors
16 CNA Insurance/Los Angeles
Superior Court Building
Langdon and Wilson Architects;
landscape architect, Emmet L. Wemple, 1972
600 Commonwealth Ave.
The 19-story glass slab is sheathed in a mirrored skin
comprised of over 5,000 individual panels that reflect
the changing sky and surroundings with the effect of
an impressionist painting. One of twenty-seven office
buildings on Wilshire designed by Langdon and
Wilson, it was intended to enhance the park at its side.
15. HEART OF LA
Mural by HOLA students
Photo courtesy of HOLA.
16. Los Angeles Superior
Court Building
Waves of granite panels at the plaza level
Photo by Aaron Paley.

LA BREA
LARCHMONT
ROSSMORE
HIGHLAND
FAIRFAX
MCCADEN
SANTA MONICA
Route for CicLAvia — Iconic Wilshire Boulevard June 23, 2013
MELROSE
MELROSE
BEVERLY
BEVERLY
Vermont/
Beverly
SUNSET
ECHO PARK
may co.
lacma
37 35 34 33
36
HAUSER
OLYMPIC
VENICE
3RD
6TH
32
LA BREA
LA BREA
HIGHLAND
31
RIMPAU
WEST
SCOTTISH RITE
MASONIC TEMPLE
WILSHIRE
THE HOUSE
OF TOMORROW
30
29
CRENSHAW
28
ARLINGTON
6TH
WILTON
WESTERN
Wilshire/
Western
27
WESTERN
3RD
OLYMPIC
PICO
VENICE
NORMANDIE
25 23 21
NORMANDIE
20
WASHINGTON
VERMONT
Wilshire/
Vermont
26 24 22 19 18
Wilshire/
Normandie
wiltern
bullocks
theater 8TH
wilshire
VERMONT
VIRGIL
3RD
HOOVER
TEMPLE
BEVERLY
ALVARADO
RAMPART
VENICE
PICO
8TH
OLYMPIC
110
101
ALVARADO
macarthur
16 15 park
12
17 14 11
10 5
6
4
9
8 7
13 Westlake/
MacArthur
Park
6TH
7TH
3RD
1ST
WILSHIRE
FIGUEROA
Pico
GLENDALE
ONE
WILSHIRE
FLOWER
3
GRAND
7th Street/
Metro Center
HILL
2
MAIN
1
SUNSET
Pershing
Square
CicLAvia Route
Metro Rail Stations
ADAMS
ADAMS
23rd
Street
Grand
WASHINGTON
10

17 High Society
Unknown architect, 1905
2974 Wilshire Blvd.
In 1968, Richard Lim opened one of the first Korean
businesses on Wilshire Blvd., a tailor shop that catered
to a largely Korean immigrant population, whose
numbers had risen after the passage of the 1965
Hart-Cellar Act (lifting immigration quotas, especially
for Asians, and urging entry by professionals and
families). Word of Lim’s quality “bespoke” suits (handmade
to order) quickly reached Hollywood elite. It
remains in continuous operation.
18. bullocks wilshire
View of 241-foot copper-sheathed tower
Photo by Aaron Paley
18 Bullocks Wilshire/
Southwestern Law School
John and Donald Parkinson, 1929
3050 Wilshire Blvd.
This landmark Art Deco building was among the first
department stores to move out of downtown, catering
to the car with a porte cochere at the rear. Closed after
the 1992 Rodney King uprising as business and the
surrounding neighborhood declined, the building
was purchased by Southwestern Law School. It took
$29 million and many years to restore and adaptively
reuse the building.

19 Ambassador Hotel/
Robert F. Kennedy (RFK)
Community Schools
Original Myron Hunt/Paul Williams buildings no
longer extant; Gonzalez Goodale Architects, 2010
3400 Wilshire Blvd.
The icon of Hollywood glamour and nightlife and
primary driver of Wilshire Blvd. development in the
1920s, the Ambassador was demolished in 2007 to
make way for a school complex. The original white
plaster driveway pylons are among the few remnants.
Street-side contemporary artwork by May Sun and
Richard Wyatt incorporates quotes by RFK, who was
assassinated inside the hotel in 1968.
19. AMBASSADOR HOTEL
Color postcard showing interior courtyard
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
20 Equitable Plaza
Welton Becket and Associates, 1969
3435 Wilshire Blvd.
Once the site of the Brown Derby (whose brown rim
and rounded crown now houses The Red, a bar at
across the street at 3377 Wilshire), this was the 25th
building by Becket on Wilshire. Like most of the
office buildings in Mid-Wilshire, it is owned by Korean
American physician David Lee’s Jamison Services,
which started acquiring properties when values plummeted
after the 1992 uprisings.
20. the brown derby
Exterior of the famous “derby-shaped” at the
Wilshire Boulevard Brown Derby location, 1957
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

21. tishman towers
Triplet highrise towers Photo by Aaron Paley.
21 Mid-Century Tishman
Developed Properties
Tishman Plaza
Claud Beelman, 1952
3440–3450–3460 Wilshire Blvd.
Tishman-Sheraton Wilshire Hotel/
The Line Wilshire Hotel
DMJM, 1964
3515 Wilshire Blvd.
Tishman Towers/NY Life-Saehan Bank
Victor Gruen, 1956
3540–3550 Wilshire Blvd.
Envisioning Wilshire as the new New York, developer
William Tishman aimed “to overcome the
Los Angeles spread” with corporate modernist
high-rise towers designed by the biggest names
in architecture. Tishman defined both the midcentury
design direction and the corporatization
of Wilshire with Fortune 500 companies.

22 Travelers Insurance
Company
Welton Becket and Associates, 1961
3600 Wilshire Blvd.
Blue ceramic tiles grace the façade, while the lobby
features a 4-part, 57-foot long colored mosaic
glass mural abstractly depicting “man’s life span”
by Bauhaus émigré Gyorgy Kepes.
22. tRAVELERS INSURANCE COMPANY
Gyorgy Kepes mural detail Photo by Aaron Paley.
23 St. Basil Catholic Church
A.C. Martin and Associates, 1969
3611 Wilshire Blvd.
Multi-faceted concrete towers are knit together with
Cubistic, metal-framed shards of kaleidoscopic
stained glass by Claire Falkenstein, whose webbed
abstractions wrought in metal also cover the
entry doors.
23. st. BASIL CHURCH
Detail of stained-glass windows created
by sculptor Claire Falkenstein
Photo by Aaron Paley.

24 Wilshire Park
Place-Beneficial Plaza/
Radio Korea Building
Gordon Bunshaft and E. Charles Bassett for
Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, 1967
3700 Wilshire Blvd.
The front plaza’s block-long and acre-wide lawn (with
a grove of Canary Island pines in the center) was
intended to enhance the city’s green civic space in
an era of suburbanization. It hosts scores of Sunday
skateboarders drawn to its concrete ramps.
25 Ahmanson Center/
Wilshire Colonnade
Edward Durell Stone, 1967
3701 Wilshire Blvd.
A modernist interpretation of a classical marble
colonnade flanking a public place and punctuated
with orbed light fixtures. It is home today to the
nation’s largest Korean American bank.
25. AHMANSON CENTER/WILSHIRE COLONADE
Interior courtyard light fixture
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

26 Pellissier Building and
Wiltern Theater
Morgan, Walls, and Clements, 1931;
restoration, Brenda Levin, 1981
3780 Wilshire Blvd.
Saved from demolition in 1980, this Art Deco icon
in green terracotta houses architects, cultural organizations,
the Bus Riders Union, and even CicLAvia’s
headquarters alongside the 2,300 seat Wiltern
Theater. Here at the corner of Wilshire and Western
where mixed-use development, Metro and Rapid
lines merge, one can truly sense the enormous
mass transit system of Los Angeles belying LA’s
car-centric reputation.
27 St. James Episcopal Church
26. wiltern theater
View from Wilshire/Western Metro
Station across Wilshire
Photo by Aaron Paley.
Benjamin G. McDougall, 1925 3903 Wilshire Blvd.
Among the famous members of the congregation
was jazz musician and singer Nat King Cole, who in
1946 was the first black performing artist to sponsor
his own radio program and the first in 1956 to host
his own television show. Similarly, Cole’s family
broke color barriers when they first began attending
services at the church. Cole’s televised funeral here
in 1965 included celebrities Duke Ellington, Robert F.
Kennedy, and Frank Sinatra.

28 Tidewater (Getty) Oil/
Harbor Building
Claud Beelman, 1958
4201 Wilshire Blvd.
From the polished black granite base (apropos to the
petroleum company that built it) rises a striking white
marble façade divided by vertically extending stainless
steel spandrels. It was the largest office building
in Southern California when built.
29 Wilshire Twilighter Hotel/
Dunes Inn Wilshire
Sam Reisbord and Associates, 1958
4300 Wilshire Blvd.
The three-story, brick-clad cylindrical stairwell defines
the carport for this low-rise modernist hotel (one of
the few remaining with intact exteriors, and the only
one on Wilshire). The circular motif continues in the
canopy cutouts for light fixtures.
29. DUNES INN
Northeastern side of the 100-room, 3-story Wilshire Dunes
Motor Hotel, later renamed the Dunes Inn, 1978
Photo by Anne Laskey. Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

30 Scottish Rite Masonic Temple
Millard Sheets, 1961
4357 Wilshire Blvd.
Eight groups of massive cast cement sculptures and
glittering mosaics on the exteriors depict historical
Masonic themes. Millard Sheets, the architect of this
building, was director of Otis Art Institute from 1953-
1959, and his work as a mosaic muralist can be seen
throughout Los Angeles.
30. SCOTTISH RITE TEMPLE STATUE
Close-up of the “Hiram” statue by Albert Stewart,
located on southern façade, 1978 Photo by Anne Laskey.
1978 Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
31 The Post-War House/
The House of Tomorrow/
Leaders Academy (school)
Wurdeman and Becket, 1946
4950 Wilshire Blvd.
Designed as a showcase for modern living, this
“research house”—with built-ins and high-tech
domestic wonders (like an air purifier called the
“Precipitron”)—was the brainchild of tract-home
builder Fritz B. Burns, who opened it in 1946 and
charged $1 admission. It reopened in 1951 as the
House of Tomorrow, and hosted a million visitors.
31. the house of tomorrow
Artist’s concept sketch, 1947
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

32 Lee Tower
W. Douglas Lee and D. Everett Lee, 1957–58
5455 Wilshire Blvd.
At 22 stories, this is the first skyscraper built in LA
after the relaxation of the 150’ height limit ordinance.
The tower became a beacon for a future distinct from
the Art Deco, Moderne, and Spanish Colonial Revival
styles defining the Miracle Mile from La Brea to Fairfax.
33 Prudential/Museum Square
Wurdeman and Becket, 1948
5757 Wilshire Blvd.
Covering two city blocks and 517,000-square feet of
office and retail space, this International Style complex
changed Miracle Mile from a shopping location to a
white-collar office district, even though one wing held
Ohrbach’s department store until 1965. It marks the
apotheosis of a mile-long commercial area dubbed
a miracle when A. W. Ross developed it from fields of
barley and wheat punctuated by oil derricks in
the 1920s.
33. prudential building
Looking northwest from across Wilshire, 1978
Photo by Anne Laskey. Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo
Collection.

34. LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
Main entrance, c. 1965
Copyright 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA, photographic archives.
35. MAY CO./LACMA west
Corner view of “perfume bottle” entrance, 1947
Photo by Julius Shulman. Copyright J. Paul Getty Trust.
34 Los Angeles County Museum
of Art (LACMA)
William L. Pereira and Associates, 1965;
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, 1986 5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Though 1980s additions make it hard to discern, the
museum was originally three pavilion-like structures on
a reinforced concrete slab that seemed to float above
pools of water (cemented after subterranean tar began
bubbling to the surface). Plans are for a new glass
building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to replace
these, though Bruce Goff’s 1988 Pavilion for Japanese
Art as well as other, newer buildings would remain.
35 Wilshire May Co./
Future Home of Academy
Museum of Motion Pictures
A. C. Martin and Samuel A. Marx, 1940
6067 Wilshire Blvd.
Ground-hugging horizontality is offset by the blackand-gold
cylindrical “perfume bottle” at the corner
of this Streamline Moderne gem, which, when
opened, was touted as “The Store of Tomorrow.”
Owned by LACMA since 1994, it will house the
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures which will
open to the public in 2017.

36 Seibu/Ohrbach’s/Petersen
Automotive Museum
Welton Becket and Associates, 1962;
Russell Group, 1994
6060 Wilshire Blvd.
The first Japanese department store in the nation
was also the last department store to be built on the
Miracle Mile. Its rooftop glass pavilion served as a
teahouse, surrounded by a Japanese garden and
reflecting pool. In 1994 the museum renovated the
building and added car-wash styled fins.
37 Romeo’s Times Square/
Johnie’s Coffee Shop
Helen Fong for Armét and Davis, 1955
6101 Wilshire Blvd.
First an airfield, then an early drive-in restaurant
named Simon’s, and now one of the few remaining
“Googie”-style coffee shops in the city. Johnie’s
spectacular neon signage, dramatically upswung
roof, and sheer expanse of plate glass facing the road
(to display brightly-colored interiors and to offer a
moving picture to diners) drew customers until 2000,
when it was closed.
37. JOHNIE’S COFFEE SHOP
Exterior view of the “Googie”-style entrance and sign, 1978
Photo by Anne Laskey. Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

Research and writing by Catherine Gudis based on sources
including the Los Angeles Conservancy’s curatingthecity.org,
Wilshire Boulevard: The Grand Concourse of Los Angeles,
A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, and Cruising the Archive:
Queer Art and Culture in LA, 1945–80.
Opening in 2017
Wilshire May
Company Building
at Fairfax Avenue
www.oscars.org/
museum