A Conservancy Tour of L.A.’s Permanent Art Deco Exposition

The Los Angeles Conservancy next weekend launches a new walking tour exploring Art Deco-styled architecture.

Promising to be another delight among the conservancy’s increasingly popular offerings, the tour focuses on select examples of that exuberant style in the downtown area.

It will begin, appropriately enough, at the Los Angeles Design Center at 433 S. Spring St. With a sleek facade, ornamented by stylized floral patterns and a marvelous lobby of tile patterns, murals, detailed doors and exquisite light fixtures, the building is a magnificent period piece.

Designed by John and Donald Parkinson in 1928 for the Title Insurance & Trust Co., it also is a battleground of sorts in the debate among architectural historians as to whether the exuberant look marked by stylized ornamentation should be labeled Art Deco or Zigzag Moderne, or compromised and labeled Zigzag Art Deco Moderne.

No doubt the issue will come up on the conservancy tour, for the facade, marked by recessed vertical windows, hints at the functional Moderne aesthetic that was then edging out the more florid neoclassical style, while the interior is very much in the decorative Art Deco mode.

Moderne comes from the word modernistic and was first used in the 1920s to describe designs that broke in style from the revivalist traditions of Beaux Arts. Moderne strove to be modern, albeit classically inspired and decorated with zigzag, chevrons and other stylized motifs.

An excellent example of this style can be seen in all its glistening turquoise, terra-cotta-tiled towered glory at the southeast corner of Western Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in the form of the Wiltern Theater and the Pellissier Building, which houses it.

Thanks to a sensitive restoration by developer Wayne Ratkovich, the landmark, originally designed by the architectural firm of Morgan, Walls & Clements, is as inviting as it was when it opened in 1930. Not on the conservancy tour, one just needs a ticket to enjoy the lavish interiors of the theater. (Consider whatever offerings are on stage at the time an extra.)

The descriptive phrase, Art Deco, comes from a lavish design exhibit, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925. It showcased with much fanfare the works of “new inspiration and real originality.” Though the emphasis was on interior design, the look was soon being applied to architecture.

In Los Angeles, hints of a marriage of Moderne and Art Deco can be seen in the singular Samuels-Novarro House designed in 1926 by Lloyd Wright shortly after the so-called “Expo Deco.” The house at 5609 Valley Oak Drive in Hollywood is massed in the Moderne style and decorated with green copper paneling in an Art-Deco vein. (It is not on any tour, but can be seen from the street.)

One of the city’s more sublime examples of the Art Deco style is Bullocks Wilshire, at 3050 Wilshire Blvd. Designed by the Parkinsons and opened in 1929, the store’s exterior is distinguished by a 10-story, green-copper-encrusted tower, its interior by a wealth of ornamentation, murals and elegant detailing. To show and explain this architectural landmark, the conservancy conducts a separate tour of the store the second Sunday of each month at 2 and 3 p.m.

As for the new Art Deco tour, it will be offered the second Saturday of each month, beginning next Saturday at 11 a.m. The price is $5 for the public and free for conservancy members. For more information and reservations, please call the conservancy at 623-CITY.

Not coincidentally, the Art Deco tour featuring eleven buildings will end at the Eastern Columbia Building at 849 S. Broadway. Designed with a flourish by Claude Beelman in 1930, the light-green and dark-blue terra-cotta-faced structure decorated with gold trim and topped by a two-story clock tower houses, among other endeavors, the offices of the conservancy.