Former Broadway Flagship Gets New Life : $25-Million Rehabilitation Planned for New Uses of Landmark Department Store
In step with a growing trend to preserve the city’s heritage, the former Broadway department store at Broadway and 4th Street, a business establishment landmark, will soon undergo a $25-million rehabilitation.
Shortly after the turn of the century, when commerce was booming in the city of Los Angeles and several new, large dry-goods and department stores were under construction, local brick manufacturers found a market for a million bricks a day.
An avid consumer of those bricks was Arthur Letts, one of the more enterprising developers of that time, who had arrived from Canada in 1895 with only a few dollars in his pocket. He not only founded the Broadway Department Store but also established the original Bullock’s store.
By 1896, Letts had managed to purchase the stock of the bankrupt J. A. Williams & Co. at 4th Street and Broadway and established the Broadway Department Store in a space 40 feet wide and 100 feet deep. He later enlarged it to more than 13 acres of floor space.
Today, the proposed Broadway Centre, former flagship of the Broadway department stores, will provide 540,000 square feet of offices, restaurants, major retail space and a health club. It will become a part of the Broadway retail district that is registered with the National Register of Historic Places, and will be located only one block from the $1.2-billion California Plaza complex, the largest private development within a redevelopment project, west of the Mississippi.
Welton Becket & Associates, the Santa Monica-based international architectural and engineering firm, has been retained by the developer, Luby-Feinstein Realty Advisors Inc. of Costa Mesa, to complete the preliminary planning for the current restoration project.
The main building as it stands today was built in 1913 with a 10-story connecting building added in 1923, and is one of the city’s first steel-framed buildings with reinforced concrete foundations.
The current exterior of the Broadway store building, including its ninth-floor decorative cornice, will be retained, according to Robert E. Griffiths, Becket’s project director. Similar methods to those the firm employed in its restoration of the State Capitol in Sacramento several years ago, will be applied as well to the Broadway restoration.
“We expect to keep all of the stairs and the fire escapes,” Griffiths said. “In addition, we will retain and utilize the original elevator doors as decorative elements. We will work well within the parameters of the historic district.”
Griffiths observed that in former days all truck deliveries to the Broadway were done at 10 loading docks in the sub-basement. “They actually took those trucks down by huge elevators since there was so little parking available on the streets. That vast underground area will be readapted for parking.”
The redesign of the building, which was operated as a department store until November of 1973, will include ground- and second-floor mall retail space, and floors three through seven will be converted to office space and collateral facilities for mart-type tenants, Griffiths said.
The eighth and ninth floors will be used for office space and a health club, and penthouse office suites are planned for the smaller 10th floor.
“Existing 15-foot, floor-to-floor heights in the building are particularly well suited to the most sophisticated computer technology,” Griffiths noted. “There is enough space between the floors to accommodate the complex cabling. Furthermore, the construction is so sturdy that the floors are qualified to support 250 pounds per square foot. Normally this capability is reserved for warehouse construction.”
The renovation is expected to begin early this spring.
Also participating as development team members are Cushman & Wakefield, in charge of leasing; John A. Martin, structural engineer, and C. L. Peck, contractor.
