A.G. Bartlett Building
- Architect
- The Parkinsons
- Year
- 1911
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
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The A.G. Bartlett Building rose 14 stories at 215 West Seventh Street in 1911, and for five years afterward it was the tallest building in Los Angeles. John B. Parkinson and Edwin Bergstrom designed it in the Beaux-Arts style as the first of what became a string of Union Oil Company buildings, giving the young oil firm its first permanent foothold downtown.
the building
The Getty connection. George Franklin Getty's Minnesota Oil Company rented offices here for 15 years starting in 1911, and it was in this building that his son J. Paul Getty joined the family business when he came of working age.
Loft conversion. In 2002 the building's 14 floors were converted into 130 residential loft condominiums with ground-floor retail, one of many downtown office buildings repurposed under the Los Angeles Adaptive Reuse Ordinance.
the style
Parkinson and Bergstrom worked in the Beaux-Arts idiom common to serious commercial towers of the 1910s, giving the building the ornamented, formal presence expected of Union Oil's first permanent Los Angeles address.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
John B. Parkinson, working here with Edwin Bergstrom, designed the Bartlett Building as part of the Parkinson architectural practice, described as a significant force in Los Angeles architecture of the era.
significance
The building is a contributing property to the Spring Street Financial District on the National Register of Historic Places, and has separately been designated a national, California, and Los Angeles landmark.
nearby
- Banks-Huntley Building
- Los Angeles Board of Trade Building
- Los Angeles Theatre
- Charles C. Chapman Building
- Kerckoff Building and Annex
- Hubert-Thom McAn Building