This view must have been both spectacular and horrifying to see in real life. One of the jewels of downtown Los Angeles architecture was the Richfield Building at 555 S. Flower St (1929 to 1969.) Clad in black and gold terracotta, it really was something. But on the night of March 1st, 1954, a wire short-circuited near a can of lacquer causing a fire to break out in an elevator shaft. This sent the flames roaring up to the top of the building and spreading to the top floors, causing $50,000 worth of damage. That’s nearly half a million dollars in today’s money, but they were lucky they didn’t lose the entire building. If you’d like to see the Richfield Building in all its glory, see: Different views of the Richfield Tower (aka Richfield Oil Building) downtown Los Angeles, 1929 to 1969
These days if you stand at 555 Flower St and look up, you see this unimaginative glass tower. This image is from December 2020:
Good morning!
I love your books, and I would love to receive these posts (my husband forwards them to me). Would you be able to add me to the distribution list? Thank you so much!!!
Hi Michael and thanks for stopping by. I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying my work – and my daily posts. When you left this comment, there would have been a box for you to click signing up to receive the daily posts. Did you click it?
I always loved this building and really missed it when it was replaced by that boring nothing box. I never knew about this fire, though. I’d have been a little over 2 years old, so that’s not a surprise! Glad they saved it…at least for a couple more decades.
Thank you for the link to the earlier post. What a wonderful collection of photos. My old boss started with the City of Los Angeles in 1964, so he saw the building in all its glory. I wish I had! (On the subject of famous buildings and their famous fires, I did see the LA Public Library’s awful fire up close. I rode the Santa Monica #10 bus home from work every day and we passed by the building as the blaze was at its peak. At least that building was saved.)
Oh wow, Bill! You actually saw that fire?! What an awful tragedy that one was. And yes, they were lucky the whole building did burn to the ground.