No. 205 - Los Angeles Stock Exchange Building

Los Angeles Stock Exchange Building
1931 – Samuel E. Lunden
618 South Spring Street – map
Declared: 1/3/79

Quick! What was the first transaction held in the brand new Los Angeles Stock Exchange Building on its first day of business, January 5, 1931?

If you said the transfer of 200 shares of Claude Neon Electrical Products, you win! (Man, if only I had those today...)

What’s the banner’s VS mean?

On December 7, 1899, a group of oil men lead by Wallace Libby Hardison met to organize the Los Angeles Oil Exchange to promote their industry, figure out how to get more investments, and set up a marketplace for related securities. The Exchange’s first trading session was on February 1, 1900, in the Yosemite Building on South Broadway, with seats selling for fifty bucks. At the end of the year, on December 23, the powers-that-be broadened the market’s services and renamed it the Los Angeles Stock Exchange.

The object of the L.A.S.E. was to “furnish Exchange rooms and other facilities for the convenient transaction of their business by its members to maintain high standards of commercial honor and integrity among its members and to promote and inculcate just and equitable principles of trade and business.” Whew!

Twelve-foot tall bronze doors/orange traffic cone.

The Exchange had relocated to half a dozen different locations in the city (including the Buildings Tajo, Hellman, and Chamber of Commerce) when, in early May 1929, the market bought the Strong & Dickinson (formerly Meredith) Building at 618 South Spring for $680,000. Nearby property owners wanted the Exchange on their block so much they collected $300,000 among themselves and handed it over to the Exchange as incentive to be their neighbor. Here’s a picture, courtesy of the CA State Library, of the old Strong and Dickinson Building which at that time housed several businesses, including some Western Union offices, a tailor, a hat-cleaners, a barber, and Mrs Elizabeth Sellheimer’s cigar shop:

(More on the building site: during the Civil War, the L.A. City Council voted to give the land to Ozra W. Childs as payment for the construction of an irrigation ditch.)

The architect for the future landmark was Samuel E. Lunden. (I know this all seems like ancient history now, but Lunden, born in Chicago and raised in Pasadena, died relatively recently, in 1995, at the age of 97). Donald and John Parkinson were consulting architects, and Roger Hayward, Lunden’s future partner, gets the assist. While the Exchange’s board wanted a neo-classical design like that of the New York Stock Exchange, Lunden felt that look out of date, so they agreed to more of an Art Deco design. The project’s general contractor was the P.J. Walker Company. And talk about good timing: ground-breaking was held October 21, 1929, just three days before Black Thursday.

From the CA State Library's online photo collection.

There’s a limestone and gray granite front portion fifty-three-foot tall, while a reinforced concrete and terra cotta construction of eleven stories – the city’s height limit in 1929 – stands in the back. It must’ve been somewhat reassuring in the early 1930s to know the Exchange was housed in such an austere, fortress-like building.

From USC's Digital Archive

Included in the $1.75 million structure was a fifth floor clearing-house, a statistical department, and a large auditorium in addition to a smaller lecture room with space for fifty. Offices were on the sixth through ninth floors, and a club with a library, card room, billiard room, and reading rooms were planned for the top two floors. A 2,660-square-foot printing room was located in the basement. The building’s highlight was its 90’ x 74’ balconied trading room with a forty-foot ceiling and sixty-four booths.

The top image below is from a 1939 pamphlet published by the Exchange’s Public Relations Committee.

From USC's Digital Archive

I’d love to see the basement’s vault, its ten-ton door having been set up to emit “choking clouds of smoke and tear gas” in “the presence of an oxy-acetylene torch”. Actually, I’d like to see any of the interior, the decoration of which sported ancient Near East and Indian influences via the hand of designer Julian Ellsworth Garnsey. Too, there’s the entrance lobby’s ceiling with four sculpted figures found in its corners, courtesy of the Wilson Studio. They represent Speed (Mercury), Accuracy (the archer), Permanence (a figure contemplating the universe), and Equality (the figure bearing scales).

However, we all get to see the tri-sectioned frieze on the building’s Spring Street façade. The eight-foot-tall bas-reliefs, chiseled right into the granite, are by Italian sculptor Salvatore Cartaino Scarpitta. The center panel, Finance, represents the personification of the Exchange. Note not only the ticker tape in the men’s hands, but also, at either side of the throne’s base, a bull and a bear (that looks more like a lioness to me). On the left panel we have Research and Discovery with a couple of scientists (tough to see behind the tree), and on the right there’s Production, featuring a pair of workers doing some sort of molding (you can barely make out the modern factories in the background of this one). Here they are, top to bottom, Research and Discovery, Finance, and Production:

The Los Angeles Stock Exchange opened for business in their new home on that winter day with its president John Earle Jardine presiding. (J.E.’s dad, John Jardine, was a Civil War gunboat designer and NYC architect who drew the plans for Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Baptist Church and several Carnegie libraries. He killed himself in 1924.) Transactions that inaugural day were valued at about $545,000.

On New Year’s Eve 1956, the Los Angeles Stock Exchange and the San Francisco Stock Exchange merged to become the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. The registration became official two days later. Renamed the Pacific Stock Exchange in the seventies, the market’s L.A. branch moved out of the landmarked Classical Moderne structure in February 1986. (The Pacific Stock Exchange’s L.A. trading floor on Beaudry Avenue closed in May 2001. Four years later, Archipelago Holdings, Inc., bought the market, by then called the Pacific Exchange. The New York Stock Exchange gobbled it all up the following year.)

Starting about a year after the Pacific Exchange vacated the city monument, the building briefly served as the nightclub ‘Stock Exchange’ (Samuel E. Lunden was reportedly a consultant). Does anyone know of any plans for the building these days?

Sources:

“John Jardine a Suicide.” The New York Times; Jun 24, 1920

“Stock Exchange Buys Site” The Los Angeles Times; May 4, 1929, p. A1

“Stock Exchange Building Plan Told” The Los Angeles Times; May 19, 1929, p. E1

“Plans Altered for New Home of Stock Mart” The Los Angeles; Jul 17, 1929, p. 15

“New Exchange Contract Let” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 6, 1929, p. A11

“New Home of Mart Ready” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 1, 1931, p. 15

“New Exchange Building Ready” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 5, 1931, p. A1

“Market Opens New Quarters” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 6, 1931, p. 10

“Pac. Coast Stock Mart Merger OKd” The Los Angeles Times; Dec 27, 1956, p. B9

Ryon, Ruth “Developers Gamble on Spring Fever Former Stock Exchange Slated for Nightclub, Restaurant, Offices” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 12, 1986, p. 1

Hamilton, Walter “Closing Bell Rings End of Era at Pacific Exchange” The Los Angeles Times; May 26, 2001, p. C1

Los Angeles Stock Exchange 1939 The Los Angeles Stock Exchange Public Relations Committee, Publishers

Up next: Libby House

continue reading...

No. 204 - Lederer Residence and Immediate Environs

Lederer Residence and Immediate Environs
1934
23134 Sherman Way – map
Declared: 11/15/78

You really can’t see a whole heck of a lot of Monument No. 204, the old Francis Lederer home. It’s perched well on top of a hill (the view must’ve been awesome seventy years ago), the base of which today is surrounded by fencing and warnings to stay away.

Francis Lederer built this home on his 300-acre Canoga Park ranch over a period of years beginning in 1934. (We visited his old converted stable at No. 135 back in April, remember?) It’s worth noting that the Czechoslovakian Lederer, who had spent most of his life in Europe, had arrived in the U.S. only two years earlier to appear on Broadway – the guy must’ve fallen in love very quickly with all things American Southwest to undertake such a project. With the help of builder John R. Litke, Lederer went to great pains to have his estate appear as much a historic Mission-style homestead as possible. For a few years during the house’s construction, Lederer was married to actress Margo (who later married Eddie Albert). He married Marion Irvine in 1941. The home was finished sometime in the early 1940s.

Francis Lederer

You can see some color shots of the house by clicking here. And below is a very fine shot of the landmark by Mr Julius Shulman, plucked from the city’s Department of Planning website.

A big factor in the residence’s 1978 declaration was the decorative and antique furnishings throughout the home. The city called the Lederer Residence

“a distinguished example of Mission Style architecture in which interior and exterior detailing is of museum quality. The Spanish and Italian furnishings are of particular interest, dating back from the 14th century.”

I’m not sure how much of that antique furniture remains. And I’m not sure what “environs” in the city’s declaration refers to, as it seems the land surrounding the home is getting more and more cluttered with buildings that’d make Francis, once the Honorary Mayor of Canoga Park, spin in his grave (he died in 2000 at the age of 100). And, finally, I’m not sure why we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway (ask Gallagher).

The home is still in the hands of the Lederer family. It’s currently undergoing a major renovation.

Up next: Los Angeles Stock Exchange Building

continue reading...

No. 203 - Baird House

Baird House
1921
14603 Hamlin Street – map
Declared: 10/18/78

Owner of the Van Nuys Nursery Company, Robert J. Baird was one of the San Fernando Valley’s first nurserymen, specializing in fruit and walnut trees. He built this bungalowish home for his wife, Florence, in 1921.

Just a bit more about the Bairds: he also served as president of the Van Nuys Kiwanis Club; and Flo not only taught voice at the Van Nuys Branch of the Hollywood Conservatory of Music and Arts, she was also a soprano soloist at the First Presbyterian Church of Van Nuys.

Mark Sutton, an active community advocate, moved in after the Bairds. Sutton was the Valley’s second pharmacist, buying Wayne Beck’s business in 1913.

Formed in summer of 1952, the Volunteer League of the San Fernando Valley had its headquarters down the street at 14428 Hamlin Street until termites and dry rot forced them to look for a new center of operations in 1975. The organization moved into its current home in 1977, a year before the city declared the old Baird House Historic-Cultural Monument No. 203.

Up next: Lederer Residence and Immediate Environs

continue reading...

No. 202 - Valley Municipal Building (Van Nuys City Hall)

Valley Municipal Building (Van Nuys City Hall)
1932 – Peter K. Schabarum
14410 Sylvan Street – map
Declared: 10/18/78

This post is dedicated to the LAPD officer who stopped me from taking pictures of this landmarked building, saying photography of the monument wasn’t allowed in the wake of 9/11. My arguments to the contrary proved futile. However, I did get a handful of shots before I was forced to stop. So, no, I didn’t get any views of the building’s southside.

Anyway…

At the very height of the Great Depression, Peter K. Schabarum, an architect who’d wind up working for the City Bureau of Buildings for twenty-five years, designed this Zigzag Moderne building using downtown’s City Hall as his model (Schabarum’s San Pedro City Hall, HCM 732, has also been described as a smaller version of the downtown landmark, but I can’t figure a resemblance). At the time of his death on March 23, 1950, Schabarum was residing at 13018 Chandler Boulevard in Van Nuys, not too far away from his most famous work.

Courtesy L.A. Public Library Photo Collection

Plans for the $275,000 City Hall branch to serve as a San Fernando Valley annex were completed by the end of 1931. (I’ve seen $400,000 pegged as the cost in at least two Los Angeles Times articles, but the $275,000 price-tag, including $110,000 in labor, is more often mentioned.)

Van Nuys City Hall contains more than 49,000 square feet of space within an eight-story tower on a two-story base. Originally, it housed the Bureau of Engineering and a hospital in one wing, with the Police Department and Municipal Court, complete with a jail, in the other wing. The Department of Building and Safety was on the third floor. Other municipal departments located here included fire, health, humane, prosecutor, clerk, civil service, engineering, and assessments.

Construction began in the spring of 1932 with the Herbert M. Baruch Corporation as the general contractor. On October 6 of that year, Mayor John Porter officially laid the cornerstone following a three-mile parade – complete with ox wagons, of course – down Van Nuys Boulevard. One of the many guests of honor at the ceremony was Tarzana’s Edgar Rice Burroughs. Van Nuys declared a holiday that afternoon, observing the town’s biggest celebration in its history.

Dedication Day was February 22, 1933, twenty-two years to the day of the founding of Van Nuys by William P. Whitsett and company (we just missed the 75th anniversary, it turns out). Festivities began at the Van Nuys Woman’s Club with a joint Kiwanis and Rotary Club luncheon with the latter’s president, Cliff D. Carpenter, presiding. 10,000 people turned out for the ceremonies at the new City Hall annex that afternoon. There was music by the L.A. Police Band and a bunch of drill exhibitions from groups that included the Canoga Park Girls’ Bugle Corps. LeRoy Johnson, Universal’s head of publicity, was emcee, and there were talks from the likes of George Sidney and Boris Karloff. (Seriously – you gotta love a town where Boris Karloff stops by to dedicate your public buildings.) Attorney Joseph Scott had kicked things off with a patriotic Washington Birthday address and he closed the day with another after a series of speeches courtesy of various officials including (former) KKK-member Mayor Porter.

Van Nuys City Hall got its seismic grade in 1996 to 1998 after the Northridge earthquake. Four years later, facing a threat of demolition, the landmark was the recipient of a major rehabilitation culminating in a re-dedication in 2005. In the meantime, the city moved many of its services into the $33 million Marvin Braude Constituent Center next door.

I really wish I had the opportunity to take a few more photos of the building. Sure, I could’ve gone back another day and snapped a few more, but I was just too pissed off (still am!). However, you can check out these awesome galleries, including some recent restoration shots and tremendous vintage construction views by Mr Raymond B. Knudsen, at the city’s official website. (The Knudsen shots are, apparently, pre-9/11.)

Sources:

“Van Nuys To Get Branch City Hall” The Los Angeles Times; Dec 21, 1931, p. A8

“Valley City Hall Work Near Start” The Los Angeles Times; May 1, 1932, p. D1

“Van Nuys Area in Firm Trend” The Los Angeles Times; Jun 12, 1932, p. 19

“Valley All Set for City Hall Fete” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 2, 1932, p. C10

“City Hall Fete Today” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 6, 1932, p. 8

“Van Nuys has City Hall Fete” The Los Angeles Times; Oct 7, 1932, p. 13

“City Hall Rites at Van Nuys Set for 22nd Inst.” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 13, 1933, p. A5

“City Hall Fete Set for Today” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 22, 1933, p. 4

“New Van Nuys City Hall Dedicated by Notables” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 23, 1933, p. 6

“Peter Schabarum” The Los Angeles Times; Mar 24, 1950, p. B13

Up next: Baird House

continue reading...

No. 201 - Van Nuys Woman's Club Building

Van Nuys Woman’s Club Building
1917 – Reginald Harris
14836 Sylvan Street – map
Declared: 10/18/78

Hey, how about a little landmark love for Van Nuys?

That’s what city councilman Ernani Bernardi asked in 1977 when he organized a committee to figure out what sites in his district – the 7th – possessed the potential to join Los Angeles’s inventory of Historic-Cultural Monuments. The following year, the group recommended five buildings: the Woman’s Club Building; City Hall; the Baird House; the post office; and Van Nuys Hotel (not the downtown Van Nuys Hotel, the Van Nuys Van Nuys Hotel). While the last two never achieved monument status (though the post office is on the National Register of Historic Places), the other three were declared HCMs, all on October 18, 1978.

Van Nuys was founded on February 22, 1911. The next year – on April 3, 1912 – sixteen women, who had been meeting as the Mission Study Class of Van Nuys, gathered in the home of Mrs Lucy Lee Trotter to organize a woman’s club for the “promotion of mutual information of its members along social, literary, and civic lines.” The Van Nuys Woman’s Club would be one of the first social institutions in the San Fernando Valley, whose clubhouse would go on to host hundreds of social, religious, and political gatherings, including garden parties, card games, public hearings, and Bible readings.

The club’s first regular meeting was held two weeks later in a Mrs Bachtelheimer’s home. Lucy Lee was made the first president, and dues were established at a buck (cheap!).

The Van Nuys Woman’s Club was federated that July, later incorporated on October 3, 1916.

In 1917, Ida Bailey donated a chunk of land on Sylvan Street (then known as West Virginia Street) and proffered the club the option to buy the adjoining lot for $550. With $3,000 lent to it by Mrs Elizabeth K. Houghton, the Van Nuys Woman’s Club built a $5,000 all-wood bungalow clubhouse with Reginald Harris the architect.

Harris designed the building with “a large auditorium, dining-room, committee-rooms, restrooms for both ladies and gentlemen and a model kitchen. A fully-equipped stage with dressing-rooms on each side is a feature much appreciated by the music and dramatic sections of the club.” Or was, back when the L.A. Times first reported on the project.

The clubhouse’s exterior is primarily redwood, its interior features rosewood. Then there was the dance floor made of maple. The favorite spot in the clubhouse, the solarium, was removed after the 1971 San Fernando earthquake.

1,000 folks turned out to watch the club’s first two presidents, Mesdames Trotter and Houghton, and its current chief, Mrs Fred Kellogg, lay the buildings’s cornerstone on March 16, 1917, the sixth anniversary of the ground-breaking for the town of Van Nuys. (The cornerstone contained contemporary newspapers, three 1916 coins, the club’s year books, and photos, folders, and publications showing the six-year history of town; it may still contain this stuff for all I know.) After the cornerstone ceremony, the crowd moved inside where they listened to the obligatory speeches as well as a few tunes warbled by Mrs Robert P. Elliott and Ellen Beach Yaw, the "California Nightingale”.

The building took another hit during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The city yellow-tagged the clubhouse, and the cost of repairs – more than $30,000 – sapped the organization’s savings (at the time of the earthquake, the club was down from its peak of 250 to just fifty-six members, most of whom were more than seventy years old). Thanks to a loan from a club-member’s son and a pair of $1,000 gifts from the Westlake and San Fernando Woman’s Clubs, the building was saved.

Even though the organization was fully behind the building’s 1978 landmark designation, in the spring of 1996, the Van Nuys Woman’s Club lobbied the city to remove the building from its list of monuments, maintaining, among other things, its architecture, use, and area were not of “major historical significance.” Dollars to donuts the turn-about had to do with the search for a new owner (potential buyers will often shy away from landmarked buildings, especially if they’re wanting to renovate the structure in any significant way). Records show the last change of ownership occurred in July 1997.

Today, the former Van Nuys Woman’s Club Building serves as home to the congregation Iglesia de Jesu Seristo Fuente de Amor.

Sources:

“Van Nuys Woman’s Club To Lay Its Corner-Stone” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 11, 1917, p. II6

“Corner-stone Laid on Notable Anniverary.” The Los Angeles Times; Mar 17, 1917, p. II3

Schnaufer, Jeff “Van Nuys Woman’s Club Seeks Quake Repair Help” The Los Angeles Times [Valley Edition]; Mar 1, 1994, p. 2

Schnauer, Jeff “Van Nuys Donations Help Save Woman’s Club” The Los Angeles Times [Valley Edition]; Mar 26, 1994, p. 3

Up next: Valley Municipal Building (Van Nuys City Hall)

continue reading...

I'm Taking A Break

I'll be checking comments and answering email, just not posting. Have a great Holiday Season and a Happy New Year. See you in 2009.

-- FBB

Chemehuevi Indian man dozing in his sleeping shelter in the field, ca.1900, courtesy of USC's Digital Archive.

continue reading...

No. 200 - Second Baptist Church Building

Second Baptist Church Building
1925 – Paul R. Williams
2412 Griffith Avenue – map
Declared: 10/18/78

When The Los Angeles Times announced in February 1925 that excavation work had begun for a new house of worship for the Second Baptist Church, the paper made no mention of the building’s architect, Paul R. Williams, who would go on to be one of the city’s premiere builders in the 20th century. The Times did mention, though, the new building would be “conveniently located for the entire Negro population of Los Angeles.”

Founded in 1885 with Rev. S.C. Pierce as pastor, the church was the first black Baptist church in Southern California. Its first building was on Maple Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets. Under the leadership of Dr Thomas Lee Griffith, Sr, pastor from 1921 to 1940, the congregation saw a rapid increase in membership. When church officials decided to build a new home a block west of South Central Avenue, Griffith made sure to employ African-American businesses for the construction. So, not only did he hire Williams, but he saw to it the excavators, carpenters, and brick and cement masons were all there through black owned companies.

At the time of ground-breaking, the church was figuring on spending $125,000 on the brick Romanesque Revival structure, including the Sunday school quarters large enough to hold 1,500 students. The main auditorium today seats 2,200.

The Second Baptist Church Building was dedicated in January 1926 with Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr, pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, presenting the dedication sermon.

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King preached here on St Patrick’s Day 1968, three weeks before his assassination. The subject of his sermon was “The Meaning of Hope”.

As home to the city’s oldest African American Baptist Church, the congregation’s 83-year-old landmark is in the final stages of a $5 million restoration and renovation project. Until this is wrapped up, the group is holding its Sunday services in space out on West Florence Avenue in Inglewood. (By the way, when I called the church to get some information about visiting, the woman I talked to invited me back after work is finished, and I really appreciate that.) Since 1987, the congregation’s pastor has been Rev. William S. Epps.

These days, in addition to serving as Second Baptist’s headquarters, the church rents out to other, diverse congregations. I like the fact that, despite the neighborhood’s dramatic shift in make-up since the building was constructed (it’s predominately Latino today), the Second Baptist Church is committed to stay and rehabilitate the historic building rather than move on, even as most of its parishioners today are forced to commute for worshipping.

Sources:

“New Church Started” The Los Angeles Times; Feb 7, 1925, p. A2

“Church Dedication Today” The Los Angeles Times; Jan 3, 1926, p. B3

“Dr. King Urges U.S. to Admit Vietnam War is ‘Mistake’” The Los Angeles Times; Mar 18, 1968, p. 3

Anderson, Susan “Only the Walls Will Change; Steeped in L.A. History, Second Baptist Church is Getting Ready for the Future.” The Los Angeles Times; May 20, 2007, p. M8

“Historic Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles Incorporates a Walkway of Tributes” Sentinel; Los Angeles, CA, Jun 19 – Jun 25, 2008, Vol. 73, Iss. 25, p. C5

Up next: Van Nuys Woman’s Club Building

continue reading...