Bratskeller - Egyptian Theater (Ralphs Grocery Store)
- Architect
- Russell E. Collins
- Year
- 1929
- Style
- Spanish Colonial Revival
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
This Ralphs Grocery Store, designed by Russell E. Collins and completed in 1929, was one of the original six buildings in Westwood Village, the commercial center the Janss family built south of the new UCLA campus as a planned 'model college town.' The university and the Janss family had agreed to harmonize campus and village architecture in a shared Mediterranean idiom, and the market's Spanish Colonial Revival design carried that agreement onto Westwood Boulevard.
the building
Rotunda and dome. The building is built around a cylindrical rotunda capped by a low saucer dome, with a pediment over the entrance and arcaded wings extending north and east — a grocery store dressed in the same Mediterranean vocabulary the Janss family wanted for the whole village.
the style
The Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival detailing follows directly from the 1925 agreement between UCLA and the Janss Investment Company to unify campus and village architecture in a Mediterranean style, making this market's facade part of a coordinated streetscape rather than a one-off design.
More on Spanish Colonial Revivalsignificance
Ansel Adams photographed the building in 1940. It was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #360 in 1988 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
nearby
- Janss Investment Company Building
- Majestic Crest Theatre
- Regency Village Theatre
- Wilshire Federal Building
- UCLA MacDonald Medical Research Laboratory
- Strathmore Apartments