The Fine Arts Building

The Fine Arts Building. . , Temple to the Arts , In the boom decade of the 1920s, in a downtown Los Angeles that was dedicated to the science of commerce, the notion of raising up a building devoted exclusively to the arts must have occasioned some astonishment. , And yet there it was, the Fine Arts Building, constructed in 1925 by the same firm, Walker and Eisen, that had designed so many temples of business. This was a temple to the arts and home to artists' residences and workshops: 12 stories of Romanesque Revival, with a facade reminiscent of the 12th century cathedral in the Italian City of Lucca, and just as lavishly adorned, with twisting barley-sugar columns and windows under heavy, arched "eyebrows." , The fired clay called terra cotta is affordable and easily workable material, and it was used generously in the Fine Arts Building, to render such stylized figures as a clergyman, warrior and scholar in the arched recesses of the entranceway, as well as in the buildings’ fanciful bestiary of griffins and gargoyles. , When the building opened on December 8, 1926, neither lightning nor shrieking winds nor pelting rain could keep away a crowd estimated at 27,000. They gawked at the ornate facade, at the dazzling two-story lobby, especially fitted with 17 bronze and glass cases for displaying the artist-tenant's handiwork for show and for sale. In a "living above the shop" arrangement still idealized today, artisans and artists inhabited upper-floor lofts and arrayed their wares below. , Tiles and Styles , The tiled walls installed as an ornamental backdrop now command as much admiration as the art itself once did. They are the work of Ernest A. Batchelder, a critical force in the Arts and Crafts movement that emerged out of Southern California after the beginning of the century. By the 1920s, Batchelder had become the nation's premiere designer of decorative tiles, and the creations of his Pasadena kilns an indispensable part of Southern California design. , The murals and painting in the lobby were created by A.B. Heinsbergen, whose works figure in the state Capitol, the city halls of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, and hundreds of movie houses. , Another artist whose name is linked to the Fine Arts Building was not one of its tenants, but Burt Johnson, who designed the figures of "Sculpture" and "Architecture" that lounge at opposite ends of the facade's third-story cornice. , Legend holds that Johnson suffered heart problems while work on the building was under way, and to complete his labors on the facade's statuary, he ordered a lift to be rigged up, to hoist him aloft in his wheelchair. , Business Cycles and Art Recycling , The Fine Arts Building shares Seventh Street with other remarkable and venerable buildings, among them the 818 Building, originally the 1929 headquarters of the now-vanished Barker Brothers furniture store, which flourished in the Southland for more than a century. It is a reminder that Seventh Street was, for more than five decades, a matchless specialty boutiques and department stores, among them Bullock's flagship store, which could boast of the city's first escalator. In the lobby of the Fine Arts Building itself was one of a chain of popular restaurams called Pig 'N Whistle. , The Fine Arts Building could not resist the forces of commerce. Over the years it was bought and sold, and its changing names attested to its revised purposes: the Signal Oil building, the Havenstrite building, and the Global Marine building. , In the early 1980s, however, it was exquisitely restored under the direction of architect Brenda Levin, whose restoration credits include the downtown Oviatt Building, and the Wiltern Theater-Pellissier tower at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. The work burnished the building to its showcase status - bestowed in 1974 - as a cultural historical landmark, and a jewel in the downtown crown.