The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California, United States. Built in 1893, the five-story office building is best known for its extraordinary skylit atrium of access walkways, stairs and elevators, and their ornate ironwork. The building was commissioned by Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury and constructed by draftsman George Wyman from the original design by Sumner Hunt. It appears in numerous works of fiction and has been the site of many movie and television shoots and music videos.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977, one of only four office buildings in Los Angeles to be so honored. It was also designated a landmark by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission and is the city's oldest landmarked building.
History
19th century
Lewis L. Bradbury, Sr. (November 6, 1823 – July 15, 1892)<ref>"Louis L. Bradbury" on the Family History Machine" website</ref> was a 19th century millionaire who made his fortune in mining and real estate—he owned the Tajo Mine in Sinaloa, Mexico—who became a real estate developer in the later part of his life. In 1892 he began planning to construct a five-story building at Broadway and Third Street in Los Angeles, close to the Bunker Hill neighborhood. A local architect, Sumner Hunt, was hired to design the building, and turned in a completed design, but Bradbury dismissed Hunt's plans as inadequate to the grand building he wanted. He then hired George Wyman, one of Hunt's draftsmen, to do the design. Bradbury supposedly felt that Wyman understood his own vision of the building better than Hunt did, but there is no concrete evidence that Wyman changed Hunt's design, which has raised some controversy about who should be considered to be the architect of the building. Wyman had no formal education as an architect, and was working for Hunt for $5 a week at the time.
The building opened in 1893, some months after Bradbury's death in 1892, and was completed in 1894, at the total cost of $500,000, about three times the original budget of $175,000.
20th century
The building has operated as an office building for most of its history. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977. and It was purchased by developer and champion of downtown restoration Ira Yellin in the early 1980s, who invested $7 million in restoration, preservation and seismic retrofitting between 1989 and 1991. As part of the restoration, a storage area at the south end of the building was converted to a new rear-entrance portico, connecting the building more directly to Biddy Mason Park and the adjacent Broadway Spring Center parking garage. The building's lighting system was also redesigned, bringing in alabaster wall sconces from Spain.
Since 1996, the building has served as the headquarters for the Los Angeles Police Department's Internal Affairs division and other government agencies. The LAPD Board of Rights holds officer discipline hearings here, and within the force it is given the nickname "the Ovens", because officers see it as the place they "get burned." The LAPD has a 50-year lease on their space.
21st century
The building was purchased for $6 million in 2003 by a Hong Kong investor, less than the $7 million Ira Yellin invested just to rehabilitate and seismically retrofit the structure after acquiring it in 1989, a reflection of Yellin's commitment to downtown preservation and restoration. It was never listed for sale, only offered to a select group of potential buyers who would respect its legacy and retain its character. The building, according to Yellin's widow Adele, at the time, was "in very good hands".
From 2001 to 2003 the Museum of Architecture and Design had its home there.Stevens, James. "Back to the Bradbury" Los Angeles Times (February 9, 2001) In 2007, the Morono Kiang Gallery of Chinese art opened in the building.
Several of the offices are rented out to private concerns, including Red Line Tours. The retail spaces on the first floor currently house Ross Cutlery, where O. J. Simpson purchased a stiletto that figured in his murder trial, a Subway sandwich restaurant, a Blue Bottle Coffee shop, and a real estate sales office for loft conversions in other nearby historic buildings.
, the Berggruen Institute maintains its offices in the building.
Architecture
The building's undistinguished exterior facade of brown brick, sandstone and terracotta detailing was designed in the commercial vernacular Italian Renaissance Revival style current at the time. Its interior is its most notable part.