Bradbury Building

Louis Bradbury, a mining tycoon who came west in the 1850s and made his fortune in the Mexican gold mines of Mazatlan, settled with his wife Simona Martinez in Los Angeles, where he imagined in 1891 a unique office building that would bear his name and remain modern a hundred years after its cornerstone was laid. After rejecting an uninspiring design by architect Sumner P. Hunt, Bradbury turned the project over to Hunt’s young draftsman, George Herbert Wyman, who accepted after initial hesitation and drew inspiration from Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” to create a five-story interior centered on a sunlit vertical courtyard beneath a massive glass roof. Built on a narrow lot, the structure featured Italian marble, Mexican floor tiles, delicate water-powered bird-cage elevators, 288 radiators, 50 fireplaces, 215 wash basins, large plate glass windows, and foliate grillwork made in France and first displayed at Chicago’s World Fair. Bradbury died more than a year before the building opened in January 1894, after spending $500,000, more than twice his budget. Later housing corporations, real estate investment firms, and the Los Angeles police department’s internal affairs division, the building also became widely known through film appearances. Purchased in 1989 and meticulously restored in 1991-92 by Ira Yellin with help and encouragement from the Community Redevelopment Agency, it was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior in 1977 and regained distinction as one of Los Angeles’s notable office buildings.

Los Angeles, California · United States