And from the “They Sure Don’t Make ’Em Like That Anymore” file comes this gorgeously ornate building that once upon a time stood at the northwest corner of Wilshire Blvd and Berendo St. It looks like it housed a group of stores with maybe a large one anchoring the corner block with perhaps second-floor offices? It must have been lovely to see in real life. And those decorative urns—they would have been quite large, probably taller than the average person.
These days, this boring brown nothing of a building sits on that corner. This image is from November 2020:
Sad to see this great building is gone
California loves tearing down history and putting up concrete boxes
Sometimes earthquakes indiscriminately tear down buildings for us.
That’s a good point, PDQ.
Yeah, and Beverly Hills isn’t immune:
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-santa-monica-earthquake-fault-map-20170713-htmlstory.html
It appears that there’s a second story deck which was probably a lovely place to be AND it would shield those upstairs spaces from street noise
Wow, that goes through some very expensive property!
The building looks similar in design to the Ralphs 1928 home office building that covered Wilshire & Hauser, where Pig ‘n Whistle had a restaurant in their huge block long building. LA architects….
According to this blogger : “Completed in 1925 at the northwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Berendo Street, the Post Building was one of the earliest anchors of Wilshire Center’s upper class retail district. Previously occupied by a private residence, the property had been purchased in 1923 by an investor named Abram Post, who also acquired the intersection’s northeast corner for a similar development. Attributed to architects Meyer & Holler, the Post Building seemed to make early use of the outsized proportions that later characterized automobile-oriented design. The two-story Mediterranean Revival building featured large arched windows on both floors, and a series of giant urns along its roof”
https://urbandiachrony.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/northwest-corner-of-wilshire-boulevard-and-berendo-street-c-1930-2013/
Thanks, Johnny!
A little more history can be found here: ” With talk among saavy real estate men (if not yet among the general public) of the Miracle Mile forming three miles west along Wilshire, it appears that Andrews, if he did indeed still own the old house at Wilshire and Berendo, thought the time was right to sell. On April 22, 1923, the Times reported that Abram Post and California state senator Louis H. Roseberry had together just purchased both northerly corners of the intersection. Architects Meyer & Holler were said to be the architects for 3301’s replacement, the Mediterranean Revival Post Building, opened in the fall of 1925, whose tenant list over the years would include a branch of the Dorothy Gray cosmetics firm and the nationally known shop of needlepoint guru Lucie Newman. For the lot across Berendo on the northeast corner, apparently never before built on, Meyer & Holler designed the Roseberry Building, similar in massing to the Post Building but of a different design, one with Churrigueresque detailing. Unlike its companion, razed in 1969 and replaced by the regrettable but inevitable 12-story Wilshire Plaza, the Roseberry remains as an especially charming reminder of the boulevard’s early, more human-scaled commercial years.”
https://wilshireboulevardhouses.blogspot.com/2015/08/3301-wilshire-boulevard-please-see-our.html
Thanks as always!