Engine Company No. 28, Los Angeles: style and history

Engine Company No. 28 opened in 1912 on Figueroa Street in Downtown Los Angeles at a cost of $50,000, built as one of the city's first reinforced-concrete fire stations. Constructed of brick, hollow tile, and concrete as a Class A fireproof structure, it served as an active firehouse until 1967. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

the building

Firehouse to restaurant to law office. After decades of vacancy, the station was renovated in the late 1980s into a restaurant serving food based on old firehouse recipes. Since 2007 it has housed the law firm Geragos & Geragos, owned by Mark Geragos, and in 2011 its facade appeared as a working fire station in the video game L.A. Noire.

the style

The building's Renaissance Revival styling gave a municipal fire station the formal dignity of a civic monument, a common strategy for early reinforced-concrete public buildings meant to signal permanence and fire-resistant modernity.

significance

Engine Company No. 28 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 as one of the city's earliest reinforced-concrete fire stations, and its adaptive reuse as a restaurant and later a law office kept the landmark structure in continuous use.

nearby

General Petroleum Building 270 ft · Mid-Century Modern
Fine Arts Building 280 ft · Romanesque Revival · 1927
Roosevelt Building 390 ft · Renaissance Revival · 1926
Richfield Tower 0.1 mi · Art Deco · 1929
California Club Building 0.1 mi · Renaissance Revival
South Park Lofts 0.2 mi · Beaux-Arts · 1924

All 315 buildings in Los Angeles