Royal Laundry Complex
- Architect
- Gordon Kaufmann
- Year
- 1927
- Style
- Streamline Moderne
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
The Royal Laundry Complex at 443 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena was built in 1927 for the Royal Laundry Company, a laundry service founded in 1910, by architect Gordon Kaufmann, who later designed the Hoover Dam and several Caltech buildings. The Spanish Colonial Revival plant marked an early shift in Kaufmann's style toward the modern elements that would come to dominate his later career.
the building
Streamline Moderne annex. A south annex added around 1930, topped by a pylon, was built in the Streamline Moderne style, layered onto Kaufmann's original Spanish Colonial Revival plant. A further drive-up service building followed in 1939 as the laundry business adapted to customers arriving by car, later topped by an overhead advertising sign added in 1955.
the style
Kaufmann designed the 1927 plant in Spanish Colonial Revival, but the complex evolved: a Streamline Moderne annex with a pylon followed around 1930, marking the transition in Kaufmann's own style toward the modernism that would define his later work, including the Hoover Dam.
More on Streamline Modernethe architect
Gordon Kaufmann was a prominent architect whose other work includes the Hoover Dam and several buildings at the California Institute of Technology; the Royal Laundry Complex came early in the stylistic shift toward modernism that shaped his later career.
significance
The complex, roughly 72,500 square feet, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has since housed the headquarters of the Disney Store and now Bluebeam, Inc.
nearby
- Home Laundry
- Don Carlos Court
- Stoutenburgh House
- Hotel Green
- Court at 744-756½ S. Marengo Ave.
- Miss Orton's Classical School for Girls