The sign on the magnificent building says “MUNICIPAL LIGHT WATER POWER” so I’m assuming it’s a forerunner of what we here in LA now call the DWP (Department of Water and Power.) In 1936, when this photo was taken, it stood at the intersection of 59th Place and Vermont Ave, which put it a few miles south of downtown. For a utility company building, it’s pretty spectacular. Actually, it’s eye-catching for any sort of office building.
Andie P. says: “There were bright lights on that building. My dad had a photo of it lit up at night, that he had taken in about 1949.”
Matt H. says: “An interesting thing – the name of the entity included “Light,” as if it is a service provided separate from that provided by “Power,” which refers to electricity. “Light” sometimes referred to, archaically, gas service, which was how light was provided in the home prior to the prevalence of electricity. I wonder if that was the case in Los Angeles, and the agency eventually dropped the word in its name, to become simply Dept. of Water and Power?”
Tim I. says: “The DWP is owned by the City of LA (that would be by the taxpayers). The price of bringing water and electricity to consumers in the city is about half of what private companies in So Cal charge. I believe the architecture of the Department’s buildings also served as advertising for the agency. The old Water And Power headquarters (across from the Chandler Pavilion at The Music Center), later renamed the Ferraro Building, has a breathtaking light scheme that is sometimes lit during the holidays. I wish I had a photo of the building going at full-tilt.”
John J. says: “The actual story is always more interesting! DWP came from the merging of the Bureau of Water and the Bureau of Power and Light in 1937. Before then, In 1929 they hired movie cinema architect S. Charles Lee to design a number of combined offices in Hollywood, Lincoln Heights, North Hollywood, the one at 59th and Vermont, and as many as 17 in total. Lee also remodeled a Toberman warehouse into the Max Factor building in Hollywood.”
Surprisingly, there is still a DWP office on that site. Not-so-surprisingly, the 1936 building is no longer there. This image is from January 2023.
Does anyone have any info if this is the same building horribly updated?
Once again I wonder why anyone in their right mind would destroy an icon of a building just to erect a shoe box building to be built in it’s place. Can someone answer this question for me please??? It makes no sense at all!!!
Have we as a nation lost all sense of style? I get so angry when I see the present day photo’s.
John, I’ve said before that older buildings with tile or ornamental attachments or lots of glass windows or the like have become fewer because SoCal has earthquakes and that stuff isn’t allowed any more and/or some of these buildings have been damaged beyond repair during earthquakes. (It’s said that’s why the Hollywood Brown Derby was demolished.) Your statement seems to suggest that someone just tore down that building to replace it with that one. We don’t know that for a fact. Just because we want something to stay around, doesn’t mean that it’s feasible to do so. I don’t think I’m wrong, but you could email the L.A. Conservancy and see if they have an answer you might find suitable. General Inquiries: info@laconservancy.org
Also, this is not a Los Angeles problem. A lot business people and corporations don’t really care about any of this. That’s why the Richfield Building was destroyed. That’s why LACMA’s being done over. The NBC Building got bulldozed with no consideration for it’s history or design only 25 years after it was built. Ironically the bank that replaced it is now being championed as worth “saving” because of it’s iconic Hollywood mosaics. As mentioned earlier with the Pig & Whistle Restaurant next to the Egyptian, there are people who own properties who simply don’t care about history or anything else, too.
Sometimes noteworthy buildings are left vacant so long they get more and more unstable. The lovely First National Bank Building at Hollywood and Highland has been vacant too long. What’s going to happen to it? On the other hand, on Dec. 19th, the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Boyle Heights–it was just voted on by the L.A. Board of Supervisors to reinvest, adaptively reuse and reactivate this long vacant 1930s Art Deco landmark.
It’s like that TV theme song, “You take the good, you take the bad, you add it up and there you have the facts of life.” Also, people generally see what they want to see. Or, “What you look for is what you find.”
I understand what you are saying Martin but no matter what the reasoning is it is still so sad to see this part of history being destroyed. LA had some remarkable architecture in the 30s compared to now.
Spectacular, and designed by the great theatre architect, S. Charles Lee.
I might’ve known this was a SCL building!
Wowsers! Beautiful.
Could that be the same building, just refronted/modernized in the 60s?
Hmmm…I guess it’s possible, albeit heavily renovated.
Oh, they should have kept that building the way it was! So many gems that everyone could enjoy and they are gone! So sad.
As a long-time employee of the Department of Public Works, now retired, I feel obligated to point out that the Bureau of Water and the Bureau of Power and Light, mentioned in the above post, were both Bureaus in the Department of Public Works, before eventually being formed into the present Department of Water and Power. Also, William Mulholland, who brought water to the city via the Owens River Aquaduct, was the City Engineer, meaning who was the head of the Bureau of Engineering, which was and remains a bureau in the Department of Public Works.