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Giannini Place

Architect
Morgan, Walls & Clements
Year
1922
Style
Neoclassical
City
Los Angeles, CA
Giannini Place
Photo: Toglenn, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Giannini Place began life as the Bank of Italy Building, the Los Angeles headquarters Amadeo Giannini built for the bank he'd founded — the institution that later became Bank of America. Completed in 1922 and dedicated in 1923, the 12-story tower anchored the corner of 7th and Olive with the kind of Neoclassical gravitas meant to reassure depositors that their money was safe. It has since been converted into a hotel, reopening in 2022 as Hotel Per La after two earlier names and a pandemic closure.

the building

The bronze doors. The building's bronze front doors are ringed with terra cotta sculptures of American coins, a piece of applied ornament that announces the building's original purpose before you ever step inside.

Banking hall interior. Inside, Doric columns, an ornate golden ceiling, and marble floors gave Bank of Italy customers a hall built to look like the safest room in the city — classical trappings borrowed to sell financial trust.

the style

Morgan, Walls & Clements dressed the bank in Neoclassical language — Doric columns and coin-sculpted doors — the standard visual vocabulary American banks used in the early 20th century to project permanence and solvency to depositors walking in off 7th Street.

More on Neoclassical

the architect

Morgan, Walls & Clements was a prominent Los Angeles architectural firm active in the early 20th century; this Bank of Italy commission was among its major downtown works.

significance

Designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, the building has passed through several lives since its banking days: sold for $39 million to the Sydell Group, remodeled into the NoMad Los Angeles from 2015 to 2017 with backing from Ronald Burkle, and reopened after a pandemic closure as Hotel Per La in 2022.

nearby

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