Fine Arts Building (Los Angeles)
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Fine Arts Building Los Angeles
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Location | 811 West 7th Street, Los Angeles |
Coordinates | Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. |
Built | 1927 |
Architectural style(s) | Romanesque Revival [1] |
Designated | April 17, 1974 |
Reference no. | 125 |
The landmark Fine Arts Building is located at 811 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Also known as the Global Marine House, it was declared a historic cultural monument in 1974.
Contents
Architecture
The building was designed by the architects Albert Raymond Walker (1881–1958) and Percy Augustus Eisen (1885–1946) in 1927.[2] It is a compact twelve-storey block on an H-shaped plan with a facing of smooth and squared slabs of light-coloured stone.
Façade
The first three storeys present a striking façade with a trapezoidal profile. The façade rises the entire height of the building, the side of which on the street is divided into three horizontal registers that echo the classic arrangement of a Renaissance palace in distinct lower, central and upper sections. In the Fine Arts Building as in its ancient Italian models, being closest to the eye of the beholder, the bottom section is the part on which the most sumptuous decoration and precise architectural definition is lavished.
The façade's central axis is emphasized by a large entrance portal, with a rounded arch that rises the height of two storeys. This deep, splayed passageway has an arched lintel decorated with plant motifs that introduces serried ranks of arches on either side. They are resting alternately on small columns and pillars variously decorated with fantastic creatures and inlaid geometric patterns. The wall beneath the great arch is densely worked with volutes of acanthus leaves and concatenated circles simulating rope made entirely of terracotta reliefs. The entrance is divided in two by a column of green marble with a capital and decorated entablature on which the two smaller arches rest.
Echoes of the architecture of the temple and the religious edifice return boldly in the three uppermost storeys, with a double order of arches on spiral columns, capitals decorated with foliage, and keystones with small animal heads. A tympanum with a curious internal colonnade crowns the façade in a riot of minute decoration and majestic architectural sculpture groups.
Interior
The two-storey interior lobby is set in large wall arches that enclose smaller arches on brackets at the lower level. A large balcony-type gallery is above, with spaces designed for artists’ studios. It is modelled on the matroneum overlooking the nave of a church. A shallow pool adorned with bronze sculptures, by the sculptor Burt Johnson, reflects light in the center of the lobby.
The lobby walls are decorated with ceramic relief panels, small sculptural inserts, and seventeen showcases made of glass and finely chased bronze like reliquaries. They now display a tenants’ paintings, sculptures and artworks.
The Fine Arts Building still asserts itself in the 21st century as a total work of art — where architecture, sculpture, and painting coexist in one extraordinary edifice.
History
Oil wildcatter Russell E. Havenstrite owned a penthouse in the building.[3] In June 2012, Los Angeles Fine Arts Building was purchased by Sorgente Group of America.[4]
The building appears in the film (500) Days of Summer, where the protagonist — an aspiring architect — describes it as his favorite building.[2]
The lobby has housed art galleries in recent years.[5]
Gallery
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Fine Arts Building Los Angeles.jpg
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Fine Arts Building Los Angeles exterior.png
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Fine Arts Building of Los Angeles interior.png
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Fine Arts Building in Los Angeles, interior.png
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Fine Arts Building in Los Angeles, interior view.png
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Fine Arts Building Los Angeles interior view.png
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Arthur Sarkissian Gallery 1927.jpg
See also
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Cecilia Rasmussen, Opulent Building Brought the Arts to Downtown, The Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2004
- ↑ Vincent, Roger (November 26, 2014). "WeWork leases six floors in downtown L.A.'s Fine Arts Building". Los Angeles Times.
- ↑ http://artwalknews.com/2014/04/fine-arts-building/ Fine Arts Building - Art Walk News
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to [[commons:Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 506: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).|Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 506: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).]]. |
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with dead external links from March 2015
- Commons category link from Wikidata
- Buildings and structures in Downtown Los Angeles
- Office buildings in Los Angeles, California
- Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments
- Buildings and structures completed in 1925
- 1920s architecture in the United States
- Renaissance Revival architecture in California
- Romanesque Revival architecture in California