Oviatt Building

James Oviatt’s vision for the Oviatt Building changed after his 1925 visit to the Art Deco displays of the Paris Exposition, transforming what he had intended as a top-line haberdashery for Alexander and Oviatt into an opulent center of luxury goods in Los Angeles. Designed by Walker and Eisen and built with steel reinforcement beyond the standards of its day, the building featured fittings that were virtually all French, including more than 30 tons of custom art glass by Rene Lalique shipped from Paris through the Panama Canal in 1928 for lamps, panels, windows, display cases, and a vast interior ceiling, giving the building more Lalique glass than anywhere else in the world. It also made lavish use of maillechort, a silvery alloy of nickel, zinc, and copper, in features such as the mailbox, elevator doors, and showrooms. Two floors and a mezzanine of the 12-story building were devoted to elegant merchandise, from sweaters, shirts, hats, custom clothes, shoes, riding clothes, and leather goods to home decorative art, with an Outdoor California Palm Grove allowing clothing to be viewed in natural daylight. Above the store, Oviatt lived in a lavish penthouse furnished with Lalique pieces and work by French cabinetmaker George Sadier, with rooms featuring spider-web marquetry, cut velvet rose upholstery, a corridor hung with photographs of Oviatt’s famous friends and clients, a replica Pullman-car stateroom, and a two-story rooftop retreat with a neon clock, swimming basin, tennis court, gardens, and a private beach made with imported French sand. The store closed in 1969, and the building was declared a cultural historic monument nine years later. The site also stands near the place where in 1907, two blocks south at Seventh and Olive, The Sultan’s Power became the first dramatic film made entirely in Los Angeles; its star, Hobart Bosworth, later persuaded the Selig Company to move its operations to the city, helping lay groundwork for the film industry whose future stars became patrons of Oviatt’s elegant shop.

Los Angeles, California · United States