City’s Oldest Mini-Mart Proves Mall Design Can Be Attractive : CRITIQUE

Mini-malls might be considered the urban plague of the 1980s, filling our corners with poorly designed, often trashy structures planned around front-apron parking.

Conceived as drive-by convenience markets, contemporary mini-malls make no pretense at architectural distinction or social amenity.

However, Los Angeles’ oldest mini-mall, Chapman Park Market, built 61 years ago, demonstrates that a small shopping plaza oriented toward the car can be a fine act of architecture and a pleasant place to linger.

Now skillfully renovated and expanded, and renamed Chapman Market, the 1929 Spanish Colonial Revival building on 6th Street, between Kenmore and Alexandria avenues, puts to shame the crude mini-malls that surround it.

The heart of Chapman Market is its internal courtyard, large enough for cars to park and still leaving ample space for people to sit at outdoor tables served by the market’s restaurants and cafes.

A tranquil oasis in the heart of Mid-Wilshire, the courtyard, with its fountain and clay-pot planters and its warm terra-cotta paving, could be in Tuscany or Andalusia, except for the trademark Los Angeles palms poking above the red-tiled rooftops.

On-site parking is the key to the commercial success of small shopping plazas, but accommodating cars poses major design and circulation problems on limited lots.

Chapman Market architect Brenda Levin said she and developer Wayne Ratkovich wondered whether to allow cars in the courtyard.

“This was the crucial debate,” Levin explained, “but in the end, we decided to honor the tradition of the city’s first drive-in market and demonstrate how cars and pedestrians could happily co-habit without any sense of conflict.”

Chapman Park Market and its companion 1928 Chapman Building across Alexandria Avenue, were originally designed by architects Morgan, Walls & Clements, who created such familiar Los Angeles landmarks as the Wiltern and Mayan theaters.

Constructed of concrete finished in a manner that mimics the look of sandstone, Chapman’s colonnades sport elaborate molded cement reliefs set off by wrought-iron grillwork.

Mostly one story, the market’s profile is marked by corner towers on its main street frontage. The upper level of the towers, with their dramatic open-raftered ceilings, have been renovated to house office space reached by private stairways.

To connect the courtyard with busy 6th Street, Levin has designed all the shops as see-through spaces with glass walls. In the middle of the front facade she opened up a passageway lined with delis and an espresso bar, which allows easy access from the sidewalk to the charming small plaza behind the stores.

The only change from Chapman’s original configuration is a square modernist cube facing onto Alexandria Avenue that replaces a derelict section of the old market. Finished in mottled beige stucco, the unadorned addition, placed at an angle to the courtyard, stands in strong contrast to Chapman’s baroque frontages.

“We decided to contrast rather than copy the new and the old,” Levin said, “to make a clear distinction between the original design and the addition. To emphasize the distinction we also swung the addition at an angle to the rest of the building.”

As the architect of several successful major historic restorations, including the Wiltern Theatre and the downtown Oviatt Building, Levin is fully qualified to make a judgment about the best way to add onto a historic building.

However, her bold decision at Chapman to contrast rather than copy is not fully thought through.

The stripped, modernist cube Levin added to the historic design is too crude a clash with the rococo style of the old market’s architecture. The addition has the air of a used packing case dropped from the sky.

The new section’s skewed walls slice at an awkward and arbitrary angle into the original colonnade, and its detailing is a touch too stark. Levin should have chosen a less radically different style for the new section of the market, to create a gentler transition from the historic to the modern without compromising the contrast.

This lapse of judgment is Levin’s one failure. Elsewhere her touch is sure in every detail, as can be seen in the skillful manner in which she’s handled the junction of the new, fully glazed storefronts and the building’s existing colonnades.

The courtyard’s new black iron chairs and tables, designed by Jeff and David Shelton, are wonderfully playful postmodern re-creations of classic Mediterranean cafe furniture.

As an act of architecture and a serene urban amenity, Chapman Market is a real success. As a development venture, its profitability is questionable. At a total cost of $11 million, including the purchase of the old market, Chapman’s 37,000 square feet of space figures out expensively.

Developer Ratkovich declared that Chapman Market is an act of faith in the future revitalization of Mid-Wilshire.

Repelled by the rash of mini-malls springing up in the area, Ratkovich felt impelled to demonstrate how a small market geared to the auto could be designed in a way that does not destroy the character of a street.

“A small shopping plaza can be a destination rather than merely a convenience for drive-by shopping,” he said. “The mix of restaurants, delis, cafes, produce markets and other neighborhood services we’ve been careful to encourage in Chapman will, we hope, create a sense of place that attracts people to visit for its own sake.”

Ratkovich believes that Mid-Wilshire, with its ethnic population mix and growing number of office workers, will become one of the city’s most urbane districts.

“I see Chapman as an urban meeting ground,” he explained, “an oasis of tranquility on a street that is one of the main connections between downtown and the Westside. We wanted to demonstrate ways in which retail development supported by fine architecture could be successful in such a context.”