Bank of America Building
- Architect
- Morgan, Walls & Clements
- Year
- 1914
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
Hollywood's Bank of America Building, also known as the C.E. Toberman and Co. Building, opened in 1914 at Hollywood and Highland as a four-story apartment complex with a bank branch on the ground floor, developed by Charles E. Toberman. In 1935, the firm Morgan, Walls & Clements remodeled it down to a single-story Beaux-Arts bank, trimming its height to cut the cost of seismic retrofitting after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. The building is a contributing property in the National Register-listed Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District.
the building
The 1935 remodel. Morgan, Walls & Clements' 1935 makeover reduced the original four-story apartment building to a single story, a height cut driven by the cost of strengthening the structure against earthquakes following the 1933 Long Beach quake.
Ripley's Odditorium. Since 1992 the building has housed a Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditorium, whose exhibits include a 20-foot model Tyrannosaurus rex bursting through the structure.
the style
The current Beaux-Arts bank facade dates to the 1935 remodel by Morgan, Walls & Clements, applied over the footprint of the original 1914 building.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Morgan, Walls & Clements was a major Los Angeles architecture firm; here the firm handled the 1935 remodel that gave the building its current Beaux-Arts bank facade.
significance
The building is a contributing property to the Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
nearby
- Lee Drug
- Max Factor Make-Up Salon
- El Capitan Theatre
- Hollywood Masonic Temple
- Grauman's Egyptian Theatre
- Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel