Diversions : Art Deco: Touching Face of 1920s L.A.

In the 1920s, nearly 1.2 million people migrated to Los Angeles in Model Ts and gleaming trains. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age, a decade of unprecedented luxury, mobility and excess. Skyscrapers grew from every downtown street corner; shiny black Packards lined the boulevards.

Angelenos celebrated their post-World War I wealth by embracing a quirky Parisian style of design that seemed to pulse with optimism. It employed brilliant colors, opulent materials and syncopated rhythms, and unusual juxtapositions of ancient past (Egyptian motifs) and distant futures (Buck Rogers’ rocket ships).

It was called “Moderne” or “Modernistic”--today known as Art Deco--and it changed the face of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles’ temperate climate encouraged widespread use of highly glazed, boldly colored terra cotta on its skyscrapers and commercial buildings. Ornate ornamentation--like chevrons, flowers, sunbursts, maidens and even leaping deer--were de rigueur for newly burgeoning buildings.

The just-developed neon light set Los Angeles’ streets ablaze with unnatural color. And in homage to Hollywood, builders illuminated their edifices with powerful spotlights. The city, it seemed, was alive with light and sparkle and glitter. Art Deco brought it to life.

But the boundless optimism of Art Deco--the term comes from the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts De’coratifs et Industriels Modernes, shortened to Art Deco in the 1960s--was doomed by the Great Depression. Americans could no longer afford Art Deco’s lavish ornamentation, its necessary skilled artisans or its exotic, costly materials.

The 1930s ushered in a new design style to replace Art Deco’s ebullience: Streamline Moderne. Its lines were simple; its features austere. It reflected caution, sobriety and scarcity--mirroring the mood of a nation struggling against a sudden, shocking poverty.

Though the most exciting Art Deco-style building in Los Angeles--the Richfield Oil Co. Building--was demolished in 1968, many examples of the building boom of the 1920s remain:

* The Garfield Building, 403 W. 8th St. at Hill (1928), was a “transitional” architectural structure featuring a fusion of old (Beaux Arts and L’Art Nouveau) with new (Art Deco). Its rather bleak terra-cotta exterior belies a passionate lobby of black and purple marble, Gothic-Deco chandeliers, gold-leaf ceilings and polished Benedict nickel-framed display windows. The Garfield lobby is an example of Art Deco luxury at its most unabashed.

* Title Guarantee & Trust Building, 411 W. 5th St. at Hill (1929). Spotlights once lit the mammoth Gothic-style buttresses of this 12-story Zigzag Moderne Building. Over its main entrance are sculpted representations of Truth and Commerce. Flowers, zigzags and chevrons illumine its balconies. The interior features marble walls and floors, as well as six historical murals by Hugo Ballin (collectively entitled “The Treaty of Cahuenga”) tracing Southern California’s history from prehistoric times to the “Modern City Rising to Power.”

* Bullocks Wilshire, 3050 Wilshire Blvd. at Westmoreland (1929), was heralded at the time as a “monument to modernism.” It remains today an Art Deco masterpiece. The store was originally built to attract wealthy clientele from Hancock Park. Its exterior features green copper siding against beige cast stone; its interior features frosted glass, dark tropical woods, ceiling frescoes, rose marble walls and even a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired textured concrete menswear shop.

The store’s porte-cochere also features a ceiling fresco by Herman Sachs immortalizing the decade’s jubilant development of Machine Age transportation.

* The Edison Building, 1 Bunker Hill (1930). This stark 12-story limestone building was described by contemporary critics as “Power Personified in Stone and Concrete.” It was the first all-electrically heated and cooled building in the West. Its octagonal entrance features three relief panels by Merrell Gage: Hydroelectric Energy, Light and Power--all depicted as deities.

Inside the lobby is a symphony of elegance: Colorful rosettes, chevrons and eggs-and-darts on 30-foot coffered ceilings; multicolored marble floors; square Siena travertine columns. At the far end of the lobby is a mural by Hugo Ballin, “The Apotheosis of Power,” featuring the almighty hand of the Edison Company from whom all water and power flowed, above a noble group of inventors, scientists and discoverers.

Three residential examples of the Art Deco explosion in Los Angeles are:

* The Debra Apartments, 267-269 Mansfield Ave. at 3rd Street (1928). This is a small duplex complex featuring striking exotic ornaments, floral designs between its recessed windows and huge triangular Egyptian fans above its rooftop. Its interior apartment doors are incised with large zigzags and stained with faux copper-green patinas.

* The Sunset Tower Apartments (now the St. James’s Club), 8358 Sunset Blvd. at Kings Road, (1929). This was the former luxury residence of Howard Hughes, John Wayne, Paulette Goddard and mobster Bugsy Siegel, who reportedly was asked to leave. It features Art Decoesque rounded corners, a sleek 13-story exterior and a street entrance and setback emblazoned with planes, zeppelins, animals, mythological creatures, and Adam and Eve. Its rare entrance porte-cochere sports panels depicting the radiator grilles of 1920s automobiles.

* The Smith Parsons House, 191 Hudson Ave. at 2nd Street (1929). Its facade is composed of embellished corrugated spandrels and stained glass windows; its zigzagged roof line is dotted with oversized geometric flourishes. Round concrete steps lead to a front entry featuring a scalloped lintel and band of chevrons--high Art Deco relief.

The Los Angeles Conservancy gives Saturday Art Deco tours. For information, call (213) 623-TOUR.