Obscured for nearly half a century under aluminum panels, the battered old facade of Clifton’s Cafeteria is now visible from the sidewalk once again. The Broadway stalwart is currently undergoing a full restoration by developer Andrew Meieran, scheduled to be completed in 2013.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the building at 648 South Broadway was built in 1904. For most of its early years, its bottom floors were occupied by a Boos Brothers Cafeteria, a now-forgotten local chain with several downtown outposts. Clifton’s took over the struggling restaurant space in 1935, and partially rebuilt the building’s original Beaux-Arts façade (pictured here in 1927).

The building’s appearance was dramatically altered in 1963 by a remodeling scheme which covered the upper stories with aluminum panels and installed a new marquee over the rebuilt entrance. Concrete blocks were installed over several windows in 1988 as an earthquake safety measure. Though the bricks will almost certainly be removed in the near future, it remains to be seen if the mid-century marquee will follow suit.

Clifton’s Cafeteria reveals original facade [Los Angeles Times]

Original photo: ”whit-m2496 – A view of Clifton’s Cafeteria in Downtown Los Angeles.” Dick Whittington Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/DW-96-109-1-ISLA.

The top photograph shows the very abrupt transition between Bunker Hill’s aging residential sections and the growing business center to the east. In the shadows of their much taller neighbors, several old residences can be seen in the right foreground, in addition to the Antlers Hotel (c. 1902) on the left. Particularly shaken by downtown’s decline and redevelopment, the intersection of Fourth and Hill Streets eventually lost each of the buildings that stood on its corners in the early 20th century.

Perhaps the most noticeable losses in this view are the white terra cotta office towers that occupied the intersection’s northwest and southwest corners, the Black Building (1913) and Wright and Callendar Building (c. 1907). Perenially starved for office space, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power purchased the Wright and Callendar Building in 1946, and leased much of the Black Building in 1958. The towers were vacated in 1964 when the agency moved to its current Civic Center headquarters. It appears that both buildings were demolished shortly afterwards, and their block of Fourth Street was subsequently widened.

Looking north from Fourth and Hill Streets, c. 1930s-2010 [urban diachrony]

Sources:
1. “Expansion of hotels.” Los Angeles Times. 26 Sep. 1902. A8.
2. Hebert, Ray. “Water Dept. wants tenants for buildings.” Los Angeles Times. 15 Apr. 1963. 31.
3. “On Hill and Fourth.” Los Angeles Times. 25 Mar. 1906. V1.
4. “Twenty new skyscrapers.” Los Angeles Times. 22 Jun. 1913. V1.
5. “Water Dept. quest for home may end in 1964.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Aug. 1961. F7.”
6. “Water, Power buildings face sale Monday.” Los Angeles Times. 2 May 1965. I2.
Original photo: “ACSC-M143 – Looking east along 4th Street from Olive Street intersection, showing moving and parked traffic, Los Angeles, 1922.” Automobile Club of Southern California engineering notebook photoprints. USC Digital Library. Automobile Club of Southern California. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/acsc-m143.html.

Up through the Second World War, Figueroa Street marked the boundary between Los Angeles’ business center and the dense residential neighborhoods to its west. Later decades have since transformed the thoroughfare into one of the primary avenues of a prototypical Modernist office district. In the early 1960s, during the first phase of the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project, Figueroa Street was cleared, regraded, and widened north of Fifth Street. The left side of the contemporary view shows the parking structure at the base of Union Bank Square (1967), linked by a pedestrian bridge to the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

Original photo: “CHS-M226 – View of traffic on Figueroa Street, looking north, November 1941.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/CHS-32965.

Streetcar service first arrived in Los Angeles’ southwestern districts with the opening of the Consolidated Electric Railroad’s University Line. Built in 1891 and taken over four years later by the Los Angeles Railway, the streetcar route ran between Fourth and Spring Streets and the fledgling University of Southern California. The top photograph shows a northbound car traveling along a still semi-rural stretch of Flower Street.

Three decades after the demise of Los Angeles’ original streetcar network, Flower Street became one of the city’s first corridors to be served by a modern light rail line. In 1990, Metro Blue Line trains began traveling along and below the roadway north of Washington Avenue, nearly a full century after the University Line’s first streetcars. With Metro’s Expo Line scheduled to open in early 2012, Flower Street will soon again host a rail transit link between Downtown and University Park. Pico Station, pictured above, will be one of two stops to be served by both Blue and Expo Line trains.

Sources:
1. “Railroad affairs.” Los Angeles Times. 3 Nov. 1891. 8.
2. “The modern city.” Los Angeles Times. 1 Jan. 1897. 28.
Original Photo: “CHS-M240 – View of Flower Street looking north from Pico Boulevard, 1897.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/CHS-7117.

Though better known for its landmark religious buildings of more established denominations, Los Angeles’ Wilshire District also gave birth to one of the larger 20th century American spiritual movements, Religious Science. Established by Ernest Holmes during the 1920s, the Institute of Religious Science opened its second building at Sixth Street and New Hampshire Avenue in 1935, in an Italian Renaissance Revival building heavily inspired by the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.

Unlike most of Los Angeles’ lost religious buildings, this one fell victim not to the decline of its membership, but to its very successful growth. By the late 1980s, the Mid-Wilshire building was the headquarters of a 250,000-member constituency spread across 300 churches in 18 countries. With a need for new office space as acute as its lack of funds, the denomination partnered with IDM Corporation, a Long Beach developer, to redevelop its land. The church’s historic quarters were demolished in 1988, alongside several adjacent parcels. In the following year, the United Church of Religious Science reopened its offices in a new four-story building named the Holmes Center. Meanwhile, the adjacent plots on the north side of the block were replaced by a large rental apartment complex built above a shared parking parking structure.

Sources:
1. ”Church in new home.” Los Angeles Times. 27 Jul. 1935. A2.
2. Dart, John. “$6-million Wilshire District project church deals for a new headquarters.” Los Angeles Times. 3 Sep. 1988. 6.
Original Photo: Reagh, William. “United Church of Religious Science church and headquarters – 00075542.” 1985. Los Angeles Public Library. http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/FullRecord?databaseID=968&record=1&controlNumber=78937.

The City of Los Angeles’ Departments of City Planning and Transportation are currently offering a rare opportunity for all Angelenos to describe what we want our streets and neighborhoods to look like into the new century. The project known as LA/2B aims to update the city’s planning policies and standards related to transportation and street design. Still in its early stages, LA/2B has established a user-friendly online town hall that has already seen a number of great ideas and discussions. Of course, the more participation LA/2B receives, the more likely those ideas will find a permanent place in the city’s planning objectives. If you believe as strongly as I do in the need to relieve Los Angeles of its car-dependence, now is the time to join the dialogue and be part of the public record. With any luck, we will get Los Angeles on the way to a more sustainable and more beautiful future.

More about LA/2B [LA/2B]
MindMixer town hall [LA/2B]

Completed in 1904, the Hotel Pepper was arguably the most flamboyant of the many hotels built in Los Angeles’ Westlake district at the turn of the century. In addition to over one hundred rooms, the hotel boasted an observation deck on its eighth floor, offering its guests unobstructed views of the growing city’s landscape. Today’s observers may nonetheless be most intrigued by the building’s garish design, a confused blend of Moorish Revival and Italianate architectural elements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Hotel Pepper seems to have been the only major work of its architect, C. H. Brinkhoff.

Despite some initial success, the Hotel Pepper had lost much of its status by the late 1910s, around the time it was renamed the Wesley Terrace Hotel. Like many of its Westlake neighbors, the hotel went into an irreversible decline following the Second World War; by the late 1950s, its old guest rooms were largely vacant. The building stood until 1966, when it was demolished and replaced by Foy Station, an austere Post Office branch.

Sources:
1. ”Doings of builders and architects.” Los Angeles Times. 4 Oct. 1903. D1.
2. ”Doings of builders and architects.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Sep. 1903. D1.
3. ”Fire in old hotel routs 25 guests.” Los Angeles Times. 23 Oct. 1957. 1.
4. ”Lease valuable property.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Apr. 1923. II1.
5. ”Private renewal project started.” Los Angeles Times. 24 Jul. 1966. N7.
Original photo: C. C. Pierce & Co. “CHS-M827 – Exterior view of the Hotel Pepper on the corner of Seventh Street and Burlington Avenue, 1905.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/CHS-31335.

Few architects have left a greater physical legacy on Los Angeles’ Financial District than the architect-developer Charles Luckman. In conjunction with his development firm, the Ogden Development Corporation, Charles Luckman Associates built two of the Financial District’s largest structures, Broadway Plaza and the United California Bank Building. The top photograph shows the projects in the midst of their construction in 1972; both were completed in 1974.

Built at a cost of $85 million by Ogden Development and Broadway-Hale Stores, Broadway Plaza rose on the 4.5 acre block bounded by Seventh, Eighth, Hope, and Flower Streets. The mixed-use complex included a 32-story office building, 23-story hotel, and small shopping center, anchored by a 250,000 square-foot Broadway department store. Much like Luckman’s most notorious work, Madison Square Garden, Broadway Plaza interacts poorly with its surroundings at the pedestrian level. The vast majority of its sidewalk space is fronted by blank brick walls, broken up by loading docks and driveways leading to the 1,975-car garage at the top of its bulky southern volume.

Rising in the right background is the 62-story United California Bank Building, famous for its slender yet austere rectangular volume. At the time of its completion in 1974, it was country’s tallest building west of Chicago, and would remain the city’s tallest until the completion of the Library Tower in 1989.

In 1996, following the dissolution of the Broadway department store chain, Broadway Plaza was renamed Macy’s Plaza; the United California Bank tower has been the AON Center since 2003. Nearly four decades after their completion, the buildings continue to dominate the above view of Hope Street, their imposing presence made only greater by the disappearance of the First Methodist Church.

First Methodist Church [Urban Diachrony]

Sources:
1. “About the architect.” Los Angeles Times. 11 Jul. 1971. T41.
2. Hebert, Ray. “Bank will construct 62-story building.” Los Angeles Times. 19 Feb. 1970. OC5.
3. Hebert, Ray. “Downtown meets a megastructure.” Los Angeles Times. 6 Aug. 1973. 3.
4. Hebert, Ray. “Huge shopping center planned for Downtown.” Los Angeles Times. 13 Nov. 1968. SG1.
5. Muschamp, Herbert. “Charles Luckman, architect who designed Penn Station’s replacement, dies at 89.” New York Times. 28 Jan. 1999.
6. “Work to start soon on Broadway Plaza.” Los Angeles Times. 1 Feb. 1971. G10.
Original photo: “00039418 - View of Hope from 8th Street.” 1972. Los Angeles Public Library. http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/FullRecord?databaseID=968&record=23&controlNumber=42256.

In 1913, merely a decade after the completion of its church at Sixth and Hill Streets, the First Methodist Church purchased a plot at the southwest corner of Eighth and Hope Streets, then occupied by the Abbotsford Inn. Faced with the rapid development of its surrounding neighborhood and an ever-expanding membership, the church announced the imminent construction of a $300,000 building at Downtown’s southwestern edge, to be designed by architect John C. Austin.

It would be another ten years however, before the congregation could worship on Hope Street. The sale of its existing building was put on hold at the outbreak of the First World War, and changes to its expansion needs led to several redesigns by Austin’s firm. Groundbreaking did not take place until 1921, by which point its construction costs had ballooned to $1,500,000. Nonetheless, the Methodists had reason to be proud. At the time of its dedication in 1923, the steel-framed edifice housed 45,000 square feet of floor space, with a 3000-seat auditorium, 32 classrooms, a social hall, and a gymnasium. With its Spanish Renaissance Revival facade, glass panels by Louis Tiffany, and an imposing bell tower rising from the intersection’s corner, the First Methodist Church was arguably Los Angeles’ most impressive religious building yet.

Sadly, like many of its Downtown neighbors, the First Methodist Church eventually became unable to maintain its majestic lodgings due to the shrinking size of its congregation. After membership plummeted from 6,000 to 400 during the 1970s, the congregation’s leaders decided in 1982 to sell the property at $9 million to the Southern California Gas Company, headquartered next door at Eighth and Flower Streets. Although the corporation had no imminent plans to redevelop the site, their offer was contingent on the existing building’s demolition.

In an effort to change the course of events, a lone congregation member named Barbara Dumas filed a landmark status application to the city, quickly gaining the support of the Community Redevelopment Agency and the Los Angeles Conservancy. While its approval would not have ended the demolition plans, they would have been substantially delayed, allowing some time for public debate and the development of alternative proposals. Nonetheless, after unanimous approval by the Cultural Heritage Board, landmark status was rejected by City Council by a vote of 10 to 2, citing the absence of a viable plan to finance the building’s preservation.

Despite continued protests led by the conservancy (pictured above) and the Community Redevelopment Agency’s attempts at negotiation, the historic church was demolished in the spring of 1983. As evident in the contemporary photograph, the Gas Company never redeveloped the land. They opted several years later to build their new headquarters at Fifth Street and Grand Avenue, partially on the ruins of yet another destroyed church.

A horizontally aligned comparison can be viewed here.

Sources:
1. ”Council rejects bid to save L.A. church.” Los Angeles Times. 20 Dec. 1982. OC_A4.
2. ”Finest church here planned.” Los Angeles Times. 1 Nov. 1913. I10.
3. “First methodists buy a new church site.” Los Angeles Times. 23 Aug. 1913. II1.
4. “For new church homes.” Los Angeles Times. 12 Apr. 1920. II1.
5. “Give complete plans of super-church building.” Los Angeles Times. 23 Jun. 1921. II1.
6. Kaplan, Sam Hall. “A downtown church threatened.” Los Angeles Times. 27 Oct. 1982. G1.
7. Kaplan, Sam Hall. “As the dust settles on Hope Street.” Los Angeles Times. 11 Mar. 1983. I1.
8. “Methodists to dedicate.” Los Angeles Times. 7 Jul. 1923. II2.
Original photo: Ruebsamen, James. “Protest over church closing.” 1983. Herald-Examiner Collection. Los Angeles Public Library. http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/FullRecord?databaseID=968&record=1&controlNumber=5030342.

Between 1931 and 1934, three major road projects completely reshaped the easternmost stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, leaving behind the thoroughfare as we know it today. In addition to a two-block extension east of Figueroa Street and a causeway through Westlake Park, its former Orange Street right-of-way was widened from 60 to 90 feet, as illustrated in the above photographs. Though primarily for the benefit of automobile traffic, the project also widened the boulevard’s sidewalks from 10 to 17 feet.

As typical of large public works initiatives, its planning first emerged nearly a decade before its completion, even before the incorporation of Orange Street. Visible at the left edge of both photographs is a 13-story medical office building by John and Donald B. Parkinson, designed in anticipation of the widening project. At the time of its completion in 1928, the tower came with an extremely generous 40-foot sidewalk, as wide was the roadway itself.

Wilshire Boulevard’s eastern extension [urban diachrony]

Sources:
1. “Asks Orange Street be named Wilshire.” Los Angeles Times. 20 Mar. 1924. A10.
2. ”Improvement launched on Wilshire Boulevard.” Los Angeles Times. 6 May 1934. 25.
3. “Structure nears completion.” Los Angeles Times. 29 Jul 1928. E2.
Photographs:
1.  ”Chs-m470 – View of Wilshire Boulevard looking west from Bonnie Brae Street before widening, March 2, 1931.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/chs-m470.html.
2. ”Chs-m472 – View of Wilshire Boulevard west from Bonnie Brae Street after widening, December 3, 1934.” Title Insurance and Trust/C. C. Pierce Photography Collection. USC Digital Library. USC Libraries Special Collections. http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/chs-m472.html.