Interior of the Bradbury Building, downtown Los Angeles, as seen in 1969. In 1892, mining millionaire Lewis Bradbury wanted to construct a 5-story building at Broadway and 3rd. He didn’t like the plans drawn up by the company he’d hired, but was taken with the sketches of one of the firm’s draftsman and appointed him head architect. The sketches Bradbury saw were inspired by an 1887 sci-fi novel called “Looking Backward” which described a life in 2000. So the Bradbury is what someone in the 1880s thought the 2000s would look like!