From Blouses to Books

The former lingerie room of green and gold columns now holds the international lawbook collection. Tax volumes are in the old beauty salon. California statutes line shelves where men’s pricey suits and sweaters were sold. And the reference desks stand in sportswear, beneath the spectacular abstract mural that once helped elevate department store shopping into an artistic experience.

A painstaking, $10-million restoration and adaptation project has turned parts of the former Bullocks Wilshire on Wilshire Boulevard into the high-technology library for the Southwestern University School of Law. The 1929 Art Deco landmark, one of the most beloved buildings in Southern California, promises to give the law school a much higher profile and provide students and faculty some glamorous research rooms.

“I love it,” said first-year law student Andrea Merrell, reflecting campus sentiment. “It’s amazing how they can take a department store and make it a comfortable place to study. It doesn’t make studying seem like that much of a burden because it’s so inviting inside.”

The restoration brings back to life a former anchor of the Wilshire corridor neighborhood after a bleak period. The store was closed in April 1993, partly a victim of the area’s economic decline and the exodus of its affluent shoppers. Also, last year’s opening of a Red Line subway station a block away is considered another sign of hope for the neighborhood’s future.

The library opening several weeks ago came a semester late. A leaky basement and other problems delayed the conversion of what was dubbed a “Cathedral of Commerce” into an Internet-linked learning center. In more pleasant surprises, architects and workers discovered and restored original features, like a Streamline-style tiered ceiling in the glassware department that had been hidden by various remodelings.

They likened the effort to archeological digs, albeit in a five-story building that was conceived for luxury--from its copper-clad tower down to its radiator covers.

“It’s sort of like finding buried treasure. The question isn’t whether you are going to save it, the question is how do you revise what you may already have done to accommodate it,” said architect Ronald Altoon, a partner in the Altoon + Porter Architects firm that led the restoration. The original building was designed by John and Donald Parkinson, with many interiors by Jock Peters.

Interestingly, libraries and retail stores have something in common, said Southwestern library director Linda Whisman, who oversaw the move of 374,000 volumes into the old store from the school’s cramped main building around the corner.

Whether it’s books or blouses, the items can be placed only as high as the consumer’s arm can reach, she said. This design coincidence preserved sight lines for artworks and clocks. In the sportswear room, shelves stand waist-high so that The Spirit of Sports mural by Gjura Stojano could be seen amid the sycamore-clad columns.

“If it couldn’t remain a department store, it’s hard to think of a better use for it than a library,” said Whisman. “They aren’t as incompatible as you’d think.”

The library has taken up about a third of the old store--the basement and the west side of the first two floors. Southwestern is studying how best to locate offices, classrooms and reception areas in the other three floors and open rooms, such as the popular tearoom and French-style suites. For example, the ground level perfume hall of rose marble is glittering again but empty, serving merely as an entryway into the glassed-off library rooms.

The 86-year-old school has been located in a nondescript former office structure on adjacent Westmoreland Avenue since 1973. Southwestern Dean Leigh Taylor said he feels a lot of pressure to respectfully adapt the neighboring store. A drawing of the Bullocks Wilshire Building is now on the cover of the school’s catalog.

“We knew we were going to be under a microscope in terms of our stewardship of this building,” Taylor said. The building is a Los Angeles city landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

In some spots, walls have been removed and the drab basement and back offices have been gutted for computer labs, a new stairway, an elevator and other facilities. But landmark rooms such as lingerie, sportswear and menswear have been lovingly restored as reading spaces for Southwestern’s 1,160 students. New desks and shelves, many in cherrywood and maple, evoke the Jazz Age even with computer ports.

Curiosities abound. A gift wrapping station and fitting rooms are being switched into photocopy centers. Irene’s Salon, scene of many fashion shows, is now a fancy foyer with its stage turned into a doorway. The brick floor in the old riding and polo shop is visible again.

“I could not be more pleased with the new use of the building,” said Margaret Leslie Davis, a Southwestern alumnus who is the author of a recent book about Bullocks Wilshire.

“Instead of as a Cathedral of Commerce, as a Cathedral of Learning. It’s just stunning and beautiful.”

Jay Oren, architect for the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, which had to approve the project, said he was impressed during a tour several months ago. “I’m very gratified that the building is being used by a respected member of the community, such as the law school, and that they have a commitment to retaining the historic fabric.”

The library is not open to the public, and the Wilshire Boulevard doors are locked. Students enter through the porte-cochere, the back door designed for motorists with a ceiling fresco depicting the world of transportation--an airplane, a zeppelin and a luxury steamship. The school will plan over the next few months how and when to conduct limited public tours.

As a sign of the esteem that the building inspires, protests led by the Los Angeles Conservancy prompted the previous owner, the bankrupt R.H. Macy & Co., into returning 166 chandeliers, fixtures and furniture pieces it had stripped from the store after its closure. Some of those fixtures are back in place.

Originally, the Altoon + Porter firm was going to design a new library building next to Southwestern’s headquarters. But plans changed after the store closed as part of the general decline of the Mid-Wilshire corridor. Spending $8.6 million, Southwestern acquired the building from Macy and the underlying land from Caltech.

Altoon said he knew that the department store would give a stronger identity to the school than any new structure could. Famous Southwestern alumni include former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark and the lead plaintiff attorney in the Simpson civil case, Daniel M. Petrocelli. But the school is not well known outside legal circles.

“It can give heritage and tradition to this school. And it can provide incredible interior spaces that no one could afford to build today,” Altoon said.

His firm worked on the project with Pueblo Contracting Services, which also revived the downtown Angel’s Flight railway last year, and with interior designer Sue Freeman.

In addition, Taylor suggested that students may be personally affected by the building in ways more profound than just gaining easier access to computers.

“I hope the impact is keeping in touch in a greater way with the past and with humanity,” he said. “And in seeing that there are beautiful things in the world as well as things that are written in lawbooks.”