San Fernando Building
- Year
- 1907
- Style
- Renaissance Revival
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
The San Fernando Building is an Italian Renaissance Revival office building on Main Street in Downtown LA's Historic Core, built in 1907 for James Boon Lankershim, a wealthy wheat farmer and miller whose father had owned much of the San Fernando Valley. At a construction cost of $200,000, it was considered one of the finest office buildings in the city when it opened.
the building
The lobby. The lobby rises to a 22-foot ceiling, and the exterior carries elaborate cornice work and spandrel panels worked with an incised diamond motif.
Added floors. The building opened as a six-story structure in 1907; architects Robert Brown Young & Son added two more stories in 1911.
Gambling raids. In its early years the building was the site of illegal gambling activity around 1910, drawing repeated police raids.
the style
Architect John F. Blee designed the building in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, expressed in its ornamented cornice and diamond-patterned spandrel panels -- detailing meant to signal quality for one of the city's premier office addresses.
More on Renaissance Revivalsignificance
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, converted into lofts in 2000, and designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #728 in 2002.
nearby
- Continental Building
- Hotel Rosslyn Annex
- Security Building
- Judson Rives Building
- Bradbury Building
- Broadway Mart Center