6th & Figueroa Streets

6th and Figueroa Streets. . , The Smart Set In Downtown , Beginning in the 1880s, ladies and gentlemen swirled to music in the ballroom of the Bellevue Terrace Hotel. The three-story Victorian-style hotel, with 140 rooms and three turrets, was considered rather far out of town when it first rose on the northwest corner where the stately brick building that houses the Jonathan Club is now located. , Ladies with parasols and gentlemen in straw boaters strolled the hotel's wide veranda and semi-tropical gardens covering the entire block. The Hotel Lee went up about the same time across the street in the 1890s. , By the teens, entrepreneurs and wealthy businessmen bustled into town every week, looking to expand westward and capitalize on high-rise hotels to accommodate the growing population. Developer Carl Warfield Gates flexed his muscles and pocketbook, putting up the nine-story half-million-dollar Gates Hotel on the southeast corner. , Gentlemen Prefer Renaissance Revival , By 1924, as usually happens in Los Angeles, stylish neighborhoods kept moving west. The by-then rundown Bellevue Terrace Hotel had been demolished, and members of the well-heeled Jonathan Club, after nearly 30 years, were ready for a private clubhouse of their own, to smoke cigars, cut deals and honor guests. , So that year, the group , a male only bastion of corporate and civic power , broke ground on its present 12-story Italian Renaissance-style building. It was designed by architects Leonard Schultz and S. Fullerton Weaver with a rooftop garden, and ornate ceiling frescoes by Italian craftsman Giovanni Battista Smeraldi, who also created the ceilings at the Biltmore Hotel. , Italian Renaissance Revival was the style of choice in downtown architecture the 1920s, and the Jonathan Club was a fine example. , Former Kelly Girl , During the building boom of the 1920s, another exclusive club , this one for architects , had risen across the street from the Jonathan Club. At a time when many architects believed a woman's only contribution to the skyline was making coffee for its creators, Mary Louise Schmidt literally went above and beyond. , The former Kelly Girl learned design and drafting from the architects and draftsmen she worked with. She helped to design and finance the 12-story Architects Building at the southeast corner of Figueroa and 5th Streets. Calculating that builders would want to consult architects and suppliers in person, she rented office space to every kind of construction-related company. In spite of the many tenants, the enterprise went broke. , Landmarks From Godley to Golden , In 1925, on the southwest corner of 6th and Figueroa streets, the Romanesque-style, 1,200-seat St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral opened its doors, leaving behind its first home, the site of the present Biltmore Hotel, where its spire had been a local landmark. , Not to be confused with St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, once located on Jefferson Boulevard, where the Rev. Gustav Briegleb, in 1930, was chastised for accepting a donation of $25,000 and a $3,500 diamond ring from the supposedly reformed crime kingpin Charlie Crawford. After Crawford dropped the ring in the collection plate, the pastor at yet another church, fire-and-brimstone Rev. "Fighting Bob" Shuler, insisted that he would rather "baptize a skunk" than accept an offering from Crawford. But Rev. Briegleb held out for Christian charity, while conceding that the church's building fund had a deficit. , In 1980, with a diminishing congregation and seismic hazards imperiling the cathedral, it fell to the wrecking ball. A new Cathedral Center of St. Paul's opened in 1994 alongside Echo Park Lake. , A decade later, a different sort of cathedral rose on the old site: the Art Deco Revivalist Sanwa Bank Plaza, a 52-story marble and glass tower around a light-bathed atrium. Before the real estate slump that followed, owners splurged for a lobby piano player to serenade tenants and visitors during lunch hour. But Los Angeles banks change names almost as often as they change money, and it soon became Bank of the West, which began calling the building just "Figueroa at Wilshire."