Fine Arts Building
- Architects
- Percy A. Eisen Albert R. Walker
- Year
- 1927
- Style
- Romanesque Revival
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
Completed in 1927 at 807-815 West 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles, the Fine Arts Building was designed by Percy A. Eisen and Albert R. Walker as a twelve-story Romanesque Revival office block wrapped in smooth, light-colored stone. Later known as the Global Marine House, it was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1974.
the building
The entrance portal. The facade's central axis is anchored by a deep, splayed entrance portal with a rounded arch rising the full height of two stories. Its arched lintel is carved with plant motifs and flanked by ranks of smaller arches resting alternately on columns and pillars.
Three-register facade. The building sits on an H-shaped plan, and its street-facing elevation is organized into three horizontal registers -- lower, central, and upper -- echoing the layered composition of a Renaissance palace, with the ground-level section given the richest architectural treatment.
the style
The Fine Arts Building's Romanesque Revival design shows in its rounded, two-story entrance arch and the plant-motif carving on its lintel, details drawn from medieval and early Renaissance precedent. The tripartite facade, dividing the elevation into distinct lower, central, and upper zones, borrows directly from the massing logic of an Italian Renaissance palazzo.
More on Romanesque Revivalthe architect
Percy A. Eisen and Albert R. Walker worked as a Los Angeles architectural partnership, credited with the Fine Arts Building's 1927 design.
significance
The building was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #125 on April 17, 1974.
nearby
- Engine Company No. 28
- Roosevelt Building
- General Petroleum Building
- South Park Lofts
- Richfield Tower
- California Club Building