Los Angeles Board of Trade Building
- Architect
- Claud Wilbur Beelman
- Year
- 1926
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
The Board of Trade Building went up in 1929 at Main and Seventh Streets, designed by Claud Beelman and Alexander Curlett in the Beaux Arts style with Classical Revival details. It became headquarters of the California Stock Exchange, which opened for business in January 1930 with a trading floor modeled directly on the New York Stock Exchange. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, one of more than ten Beelman-designed buildings on the list.
the building
Stock exchange trading floor. The exchange's trading floor occupied the second floor, measuring 89 by 90 feet and built to hold 300 brokers. It included six trading posts with price indicators for 384 stock issues, plus a clearing-house, a visitors' gallery, a members' smoking room, private executive offices, committee rooms, and locker rooms. The first recorded trade, in January 1930, was for 100 shares.
the style
Beelman and Curlett dressed the building in a Beaux Arts and Classical Revival vocabulary, the formal commercial register typical of downtown Los Angeles office buildings of the late 1920s.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Claud Beelman, working here with Alexander Curlett, was one of the most prolific commercial architects in 1920s Los Angeles; more than ten of his buildings, including this one, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
significance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. Upon completion the building held 230,000 square feet of space, with fourteen ground-floor stores and offices above, plus the second-floor trading hall that housed the California Stock Exchange starting in January 1930.
nearby
- A.G. Bartlett Building
- Banks-Huntley Building
- Grether & Grether Building
- Kerckoff Building and Annex
- Los Angeles Theatre
- Charles C. Chapman Building