Jardinette Apartments, Los Angeles: architect, style and history

Jardinette Apartments, now called Marathon Apartments, is a four-story building in Hollywood designed by Richard Neutra in 1928 -- his first commission in the United States. Announced in the Los Angeles Times in November 1927 as a $225,000, forty-three-unit Class B apartment house at Marathon Street and Manhattan Place, it has been called 'one of the first Modernist buildings in America' and 'America's first multi-family, International-style building.' It is both a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

the building

Ribbon windows and cantilevers. The building's reinforced concrete frame carries continuous ribbon windows and cantilevered balconies, a combination architect Harwell Hamilton Harris found so unlike anything he had seen under construction that it reminded him of European expressionism.

Forty-three units, $225,000. The Los Angeles Times announced the project in November 1927 on a 71-by-130-foot site at Marathon Street and Manhattan Place, one block west of Western Avenue and one block north of Melrose Avenue, describing forty-three apartments built at an estimated cost of $225,000.

the style

Jardinette is an early and rare American example of the International Style, the European modernist vocabulary of flat roofs, ribbon windows, and unornamented volumes that Neutra imported almost directly from the continent -- historian Richard Weston named it among the first Modernist buildings in America.

the architect

Richard Neutra was a globally significant modernist architect, and Jardinette Apartments was his first built commission in the United States after emigrating -- the project that launched his American career.

significance

Jardinette Apartments carries dual landmark status, individually designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

more by Richard Neutra

Strathmore Apartments Los Angeles
Egg Company Building II Los Angeles
Los Angeles County Hall of Records Los Angeles · 1962
Constance Perkins House Los Angeles · 1955
Kaufmann Desert House Palm Springs · 1946

nearby

Wilshire Branch 0.7 mi · Spanish Colonial Revival · 1926
Hollywood Studio Club 1.0 mi · Renaissance Revival
Old Warner Brothers Studios 1.0 mi · Neoclassical · 1923
Ravenswood Apartments 1.1 mi · Art Deco · 1930
40 N. Western Ave. 1.1 mi · Postmodernism · 1989
The Bricker Building 1.1 mi · Renaissance Revival

All 315 buildings in Los Angeles