Walking the Miracle Mile : Los Angeles’ Once-Glamorous Shopping District Is Coming Back--This Time, With Museums, Galleries and Commercial Centers
Fifty years ago, before Melrose Avenue, Rodeo Drive or South Coast Plaza, one place symbolized haute couture Southern California: the Miracle Mile.
From 1930 to 1960, the section of Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax and La Brea avenues was Los Angeles’ most stylish retail district, as well as the Southland’s first suburban shopping district designed for the automobile.
Today, after two decades of commercial and retail decline, the Miracle Mile once again attracts Los Angeles’ glitterati--this time, however, to new museums, restaurants, galleries and commercial centers.
A Walk of History
Perhaps no other place on the Westside represents so much of the city’s history. This walk will take you to the La Brea Tar Pits with its Ice Age fossils, by old oil fields, through Los Angeles’ largest grouping of art museums and along quiet lanes lined with 1920s garden apartments; through the city’s richest Art Deco commercial district and by some of the area’s newest commercial complexes.
To get to the Miracle Mile from the Santa Monica Freeway (I-10), exit north at La Brea Avenue. Turn left on Wilshire Boulevard to Curson Avenue. Allow three hours for the walk.
Begin at the northeast corner of Curson Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard at the bronze bust of A. W. Ross, the founder and developer of the Miracle Mile.
In 1920, when Ross purchased 18 acres of nearby land for $54,000, this section of Wilshire was nothing more than a two-lane dirt road passing through barley and oil fields.
A dreamer and a schemer, Ross targeted this site--4 miles from the Westside’s most posh neighborhoods of Beverly Hills, West Adams, Westlake and Hollywood--to become Los Angeles’ most fashionable shopping district, oriented to automobile drivers and wealthy clients. One by one, elegant Art Deco commercial buildings rose from the fields along Wilshire Boulevard.
The Miracle Mile flourished until the 1960s, when it became unable to compete with newer suburban shopping malls and many businesses relocated.
Resurgence Has Begun
However, the past five years have seen signs of revitalization. Some hope that rebirth of the Miracle Mile is at hand. Others, however, fear that such development will bring demolition of the Art Deco commercial architecture and will force the relocation of older residents and businesses.
Whatever the outcome in the decade ahead, one thing is certain: The Miracle Mile revitalization has begun.
Across the street at 5814 Wilshire Blvd. is the Craft & Folk Art Museum, dedicated to the study and presentation of the world’s folk art, crafts and designs. The museum also houses a research library and, on the second floor, the Egg and the Eye Restaurant.
Walk into Hancock Park to the viewing platform overlooking the Lake Pit, a primeval broth with an oil-slicked surface seething with bubbles of methane gas escaping from fissures below. In the late 1800s, asphalt was quarried here as a roofing and road-surfacing material. After the quarry was abandoned, water gradually filled the site, creating this small lagoon.
Life-size fiberglass models of imperial mammoths edge the lake, one trumpeting in terror as it struggles to escape the tar-bottomed water. This scene represents the fate of thousands of Ice Age animals that became trapped in the sticky tar pits. La Brea Tar Pits, found throughout the park, contain the world’s largest find of Pleistocene fossils.
Tar Used for Millennia
For millennia, humans have excavated the surface tar: The American Indians used it to waterproof their boats and reed huts and to repair broken implements; early Pueblo people also relied on the tar as a waterproofing material for their adobes, transporting the material along the ancient Indian path today known as Wilshire Boulevard.
In 1865, Maj. Henry Hancock purchased Rancho La Brea. He sold large shipments of pitch to San Francisco for that city’s first street pavings. The tar continued to be sold to the Pueblo, and in the 1890s, Hancock produced oil from the site.
Thousands of tar-soaked bones, considered a curiosity and a nuisance, were in the asphalt pits. In 1901, bone samples were sent to a paleontologist, who identified some as belonging to the now-extinct saber-toothed tiger, dire wolf and giant sloth.
From 1901 to 1905, the first scientific excavations were conducted at the La Brea Tar Pits. In 1913, Capt. G. Allan Hancock (son of Henry) allowed the county to excavate at the rancho for two years. During this time, the Natural History Museum unearthed more than 750,000 bones. In 1915, Hancock donated the excavated bones and 23 acres of the Rancho to the county for the continued excavations and research.
Geological History
Today, the George C. Page Museum displays many fossils discovered in the asphaltic bogs. Visitors can view a narrated slide show of the area’s geological history, skeletal remains of mammoths, American lions, carnivorous birds and even the 9,000-year-old La Brea Woman, the only human remains discovered in the tar pits.
From the Page Museum, walk past the bust of Capt. Hancock toward the Pavilion for Japanese Art. Designed by the late architect Bruce Goff and opened in September, this newest addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art complex exhibits portions of the Shin’enkan collection of Japanese art from the Edo period.
Surrounded by a fence to the right is Pit No. 4, excavated in 1914 to reveal rich fossil finds. The fence was added in the 1940s after two boys, chasing rabbits, stumbled into the pit and nearly drowned in the tar before being rescued by firefighters.
Cross the small bridge and enter Pit 91 Viewing Station to peer into the 28-foot-square excavation site (active August through September).
Continue walking west to the cylindrical Observation Pit, open only on weekends and built in 1952 to provide public access down into a fossil-laden asphalt deposit. Walk down the spiral ramp to the bottom, where blisters of methane gas break through the oozing pools of tar. Exit and follow the path northeast back toward the Page Museum.
Walk east to Marie Callender’s at 5773 Wilshire Blvd. Constructed in 1985, this $6-million restaurant was designed as an extravagant turn-of-the-century bistro. Two colorful murals inside depict the glory days of the Miracle Mile in the late 1940s.
Wilshire Courtyard, the new 1-million-square-foot commercial development at 5750 Wilshire designed by McFarland, Vasquez, & Partners, consists of two C-shaped structures clad in polished red granite. Pyramidal skylights and fountains add a Deco flavor to the complex.
Modern Architecture
At 5757 Wilshire stands Museum Square, built in 1948 by Wurdman & Becket, which marked the Miracle Mile’s post-World War II entrance into modern architecture.
Turn left on Masselin Avenue, walk north beneath its jacaranda trees to 6th Street and turn right. To the north stands Park La Brea, a massive housing project constructed in the late 1940s by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Today, nearly 12,000 residents live in its two-story Georgian Moderne townhouses and 18 13-story towers, all set in park-like grounds.
Suddenly, however, you enter a neighborhood of historic revival and Art Deco apartments almost intact from the 1920s and ‘30s. At 617 S. Ridgeley Drive stands a remarkable example of French Chateau Revival garden courtyard housing: a three-story, mansard-roofed, gabled apartment building built in 1929.
Continue east on 6th Street and turn right on Burnside Avenue where you’ll see other apartment buildings, including a French Chateau at No. 609, a Tudor Revival brick structure at No. 630 and two Zigzag Moderne buildings at Nos. 626 and 636.
Turn left on Wilshire Boulevard to enter the heart of the Miracle Mile historic district. At 5514 Wilshire stands Desmond’s Tower, built in 1928 by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood. Designed for the emerging age of the automobile, the building’s 10-story tower created a visual landmark, while its curving ground-floor windows offered passing motorists sweeping views of merchandise displays. In the 1930s, Silverwood’s and Phelps Terkel also opened retail stores here.
The El Rey Theater at 5517 Wilshire, designed by architect Clifford Balch in 1938, interprets Zigzag Moderne with cast-concrete panels of geometric designs. A vertical neon sign rises above the central marquee, both embellished with swirling floriated designs.
At 5505 Wilshire is a flamboyant interpretation of Zigzag Moderne and Egyptian Revival, highlighted with its eagle-topped columns, now housing the Korean Cultural Service, built and designed by Frank Rasche in 1929.
One of the first commercial structures on the Miracle Mile (5478 Wilshire), built in 1927 and designed by Frank M. Tyler, is noted for its Spanish Colonial Revival style.
Another of the Miracle Mile’s great Art Deco towers, the Dominguez-Wilshire Building, was built in 1930 by Morgan, Walls & Clements at 5410 Wilshire.
Roman Foods Market, built in 1935 at 5413 Wilshire, reveals the simple geometric shapes and forms of the classic Streamlined Moderne style, with its unadorned banded surfaces. At 5401 Wilshire is one of the most elaborately designed of Streamlined Moderne buildings in Los Angeles.
The programmatic architectural style may be seen at 5370 Wilshire. Originally the Darkroom camera store, designed by Marcus P. Miller in 1938, this small storefront facade features panels of black vitrolite glass with silver metal trim and a porthole window forming the shape of a camera.
Turn left on Cloverdale Avenue, a quiet residential street lined with mature melaleuca trees and historic revival apartments. A Monterrey Revival building stands at No. 661 Cloverdale; the Villa Roma, a pink Italian-inspired villa with mature dragon trees, at No. 642, and a Regency Moderne garden courtyard apartment at No. 638.
Turn left at 6th Street, where there’s a two-story Streamline Moderne apartment building designed by Milton J. Black and R. Borman in 1938.
Tudor Revival
At 603 S. Cochran Ave., the Cornell Apartments create a picturesque rendition of Tudor Revival with its Beaux Arts-inspired design of quoined walls, window pediments with sculpted faces and gabled mansard roof.
Turn right on Cochran Avenue. This block contains many Mediterranean Revival apartments with red-tile roofs, arched entries, wrought-iron grillwork, balconies and colorful tile accents.
Turn right on 4th Street. At 364 S. Cloverdale Ave. sits one of the area’s most refined Zigzag Moderne apartment buildings. Turn right again on Detroit Street, where you will notice a dramatic change, as elegant older structures have recently been demolished and then replaced by “luxury” apartment towers.
Turn left on 6th Street and walk to the Pikme-Up coffeehouse at No. 5437. With its ‘60s dinette furniture, this witty cafe offers baked goods, salads and coffee drinks.
Cross La Brea Avenue and turn right on Sycamore Avenue. The “Hansel and Gretel” cottage, No. 607 Sycamore, with its variegated shingle roof and conical tower, portrays the storybook character of many Hollywood bungalows built in the 1920s.
Turn right on Wilshire Boulevard and walk to No. 5209, a superb example of Zigzag Moderne style.
The tallest building on Ross’ Miracle Mile is the Mutual of Omaha Building at No. 5217 Wilshire, designed by Meyer & Holler in 1930.
Turn left on La Brea Avenue, walk past the Deco-themed Metroplaza mini-mall at No. 740 to the Firestone Garage at the corner of 8th Street and La Brea. This garage epitomizes the progressive optimism of the Streamline Moderne style.
Turn right on 8th Street, walk three blocks and turn right on Cochran Avenue. The Cathedral Chapel Parish School, at 755 S. Cochran, built in 1930, images an Italian Renaissance palazzo.
French Chateau
Turn left on Wilshire Boulevard, left on Masselin Avenue, and right on 8th Street, following the pathway through the rear park of Wilshire Courtyard. Another French Chateau garden-apartment court stands at 5770 8th St.
Continue on 8th Street to the International-style Buck House, designed by Rudolph Schindler in 1934, at 805 S. Genesee Ave.
Turn right and walk north on Genesee Avenue. Walk up the steps behind the Mutual Benefit Life Tower, through its concrete plaza to Wilshire Boulevard. The Robert O. Anderson Building of the County Art Museum rises across the street. Built in 1986 by the firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, this museum addition, with its grand portal, evinces the style and hope of revitalization of the Miracle Mile.
