The Drive to Be Different : Developer Shifts Gears and Parks New Building, Which Is Designed to Look Kind of Like a Cadillac, in Tarzana

OK, the mileage isn’t the greatest. And it may be a little out of style. But just try and beat the legroom.

It looks like a pink Cadillac, but not the kind you’ll find cruising the streets of Los Angeles. In the tradition of a city with buildings shaped like hot dogs, doughnuts and brown derbies, a two-story office building in Tarzana is modeled after the front end of an early 1960s Caddy.

“We wanted to attract some attention to the block,” said Bruce Littell of CBS Realcorp, developer of the structure nearing completion at 19611 Ventura Blvd. “And this building is unique.”

Unlike the businesslike structures nearby, the building boasts four seven-foot neon headlights, windows lined up to form a radiator grille, cement front fenders and “tires”--block walls painted black.

“Very rarely do I have creative impulses like this,” said Lee Oaks, the architect who conceived the design for the $700,000 structure, called Fleetwood Square. “I was just walking around and saw this Cadillac grille. It just clicked.”

When drawing the building plan, Oaks said, he slightly modified the Cadillac design to ward off legal suits. “We prefer to call it an early ‘60s classic, not a Cadillac, even though that’s what it is.”

Oaks said the building symbolizes the local life style: “Everybody in L.A. lives in their cars.”

Susan Elkins, director of marketing for Matlin-Dvoretzky Architects, where Oaks works, said the unusual exterior is intended primarily to attract tenants and give the shops at Fleetwood Square a competitive edge.

So far, 60% of the building’s 12,450 square feet are rented, Littell said. (One company to locate there is an auto rental agency.) But reactions to the building have been mixed.

Some people appreciate the design’s whimsy, including Ray Brown of Big Beautiful Woman magazine, a fashion publication that moved its headquarters there Friday. “I love it. It’s fresh,” he said. “A lot of people driving by do double takes.”

But some passers-by did not react with such enthusiasm. “It’s supposed to be a car?” said Rick Penner of Los Angeles as he craned his neck to get a better look. “Well, tell them to get in and drive it away.”

Groused another pedestrian: “It’s beyond being not aesthetically pleasing. It’s irritating. The owners of this building are going to be sorry. It may be ‘in’ now, but two years from now, it’ll be out.”

Littell acknowledged that the unorthodox building could be rejected by the marketplace. “My partner was nervous. He’s more experienced than I am, and he felt we should go with a conventional type of shopping center. But, when we decided to go with it, we went all the way, which included painting it pink.”

Fleetwood Square is a throwback to an era during the 1930s and 1940s when businessmen tried to catch the eye of motorists with buildings resembling objects, said Panos Koulermos, a professor of architecture at USC. This style, using recognizable structures to attract patrons, became known as programmatic architecture.

“You could see it all over the nation, but it was especially big in Los Angeles,” he said. “It fit in with the city’s image to support the weird and the make-believe.”

Indeed, buildings shaped like frogs, igloos, farm animals, shoes, coffee cups, jails, pumpkins, dogs and zeppelins dotted Los Angeles’ landscape at one time. Still standing are edifices suggesting a giant hot dog, camera and doughnut, but today this pop architecture is on the decline.

Some people now associate programmatic architecture with Los Angeles’ free-wheeling style, Koulermos said. But years ago, residents regarded these structures as eyesores and wanted them torn down.

The Famous Brown Derby

Probably the best-known building of the era was the hat-shaped Original Brown Derby. The hat now sits atop a three-story building on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Gone are Sanderson’s Hosiery in West Los Angeles (ornamented by a 35-foot stockinged leg), the Mother Goose Pantry in Pasadena (customers ate in a Paul Bunyon-sized shoe) and the Dugout restaurant in Montebello (complete with circling sandbags and a World War I-vintage plane sticking out of the roof).

Koulermos said he doesn’t expect Fleetwood Square to resuscitate the programmatic style, even though the entrance to another recently constructed Los Angeles building was designed to resemble binoculars.

“There’s humor in life,” he said. “But the space is limited for this kind of thing.” When it comes to programmatic architecture, he said, “the excitement and innovation are gone.”