The Broadway Hollywood Building (sometimes Broadway Building or Broadway Department Store Building) is a building in Los Angeles' Hollywood district. The building is situated in the Hollywood Walk of Fame monument area on the southwest corner of the intersection referred to as Hollywood and Vine, marking the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. It was originally built as the B. H. Dyas Building in 1927.[1] The Broadway Hollywood Building is referred to by both its main address of 6300 Hollywood Boulevard and its side address of 1645 Vine Street.
The Broadway Hollywood Building is a contributing property to the National Register of Historic Places U.S. Historic District-listed Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District. It has been listed as both a historic district contributing property and individually registered historic property by the city of Los Angeles and the state of California. The building has a neon sign above it that is considered notable and historic.
The Broadway Hollywood Building was built as a department store, but has been refurbished as both commercial office space and residential condominiums. For several decades it hosted The Broadway. The building had an annex built to the west in 1939 and is also associated with the address 6316 Hollywood Boulevard. As a residential building, the building's units have had numerous famous owners.
Although several sources describe the building as a ten-story building,[1] the building is described as a nine-story building in the Hollywood Boulevard 1985 National Register of Historic Places nomination form.[2] Atop the ten-story building is a two-story penthouse that serves as the base for the metal neon sign that says "The Broadway Hollywood".[3] The original department store was designed by Frederick Rice Dorn in 1927 and its annex was designed by local architects John Parkinson and Donald B. Parkinson in 1938.[3] It was originally built in the neoclassical architecture style from reinforced concrete with brick upper stories that, along with the street level, include the bulk of the detailing. Notable details include a classical entablature surmounts pilasters with Corinthian capitals, which result in what is described as a colonnade effect, which is repeated in the upper stories.[2] The building is capped with a heavy cornice.[1] The structure's highly ornamented facade includes decorative cornices and terra cotta pilasters. The top two stories has Corinthian-styled columns situated upon a projecting beltcourse.[3]
Although sources describe the annex as eight storeys,[1] the nomination calls it a "six story International Style addition".[2] It is noted for banded windows and simple exterior. By the time of the nomination several showcase windows had been altered.[2] According to the City of Los Angeles Office of Economic Development, the annex used "Streamline Moderne Style, characterized by the absence of ornamentation and an emphasis on smooth wall surfaces, rounded corners, flat roofs and linear elements that give a horizontal emphasis."[3] The unifying exterior element between the original structure and its annex are the ground level colonnades.[3]
Recognition
At the base of the building is a historical designation plaque for the Hollywood and Vine intersection
The building is included in the National Register of Historic Places U.S. Historic District-listed Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District, which covers from 6200–7000 Hollywood Boulevard, that was designated April 4, 1985.[2] Both of the building's streetscapes—Hollywood Boulevard & Vine Street—are located within the City of Los Angeles Monument area LA-194 designated as the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was designated July 5, 1978.[4] The building and its neon sign were individually designated as a City monument (LA-664) on September 29, 1999.[4] On April 4, 1985, the building and the entire Hollywood Blvd Commercial & Entertainment District were recognized by the California Office of Historic Preservation with status code 1D in designations 0053-4680-0054 and 0053-4680-9999, respectively.[5] The building is covered by the Mills Act (Contract Number: 53175873 and Case Number: CHC-2005-5690-MA).
History
Broadway Hollywood Building from the north along Vine Street in 1980
In 1922,[6] as Hollywood Boulevard regional shopping district, second only to Downtown Los Angeles, was taking form, stock was sold to finance construction of a four-story building at Hollywood and Vine to house a branch of Boadway Bros., a small Pasadena-based department store chain. Boadway’s went out of business in 1923, and B. H. Dyas agreed to open in the building instead.[7]
In 1927, the Classical Revival Style building was built by local businessman Frank R. Strong as a B. H. Dyas Company Department Store.[1][3] The construction, which continued into 1928, marked the first department store branch outside of the main Downtown Los Angelescentral business district and led to similar large-scale commercial developments outside downtown.[3] Due to the Great Depression, B. H. Dyas had to consolidate its operation back to its original store and The Broadway purchased the 30-year lease for this prime location for $2 million (US$40.1 million in 2023 dollars[8]) in 1931.[3] The Broadway Hollywood Building quickly found its niche by serving the Hollywood's film and finance industries demand for high end products.[3]
With the store's profits, it was able to expand in 1938 with 52,000 square feet (4,800m2) of retail space.[3] In 1939, an eight-story modern annex designed by Parkinson and Parkinson was built immediately to the west.[1][3] The Broadway Department Store served as a tenant until 1982,[9] after which building was reconfigured for office use.[3]
In 2005 and after having been vacant for many years, a renovation began to convert the 10-story building into 96 loft condominiums, while adding two floors to the annex.[1] In July 2008, the residents sued the bar on the first floor of the building for its noise pollution, resulting in the relocation of the bar in February 2009.[10] Among the current and past owners of the building's loft condominiums are Dave Navarro,[11][12][13]Jason Statham,[14]Danny Masterson, and Charlize Theron.[15]
In 2016, the building was sold for $14.2 million.[16]
Hollywood and Vine, the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, California, became known in the 1920s for its concentration of radio and movie-related businesses. The Hollywood Walk of Fame is centered on the intersection.
Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills and its eastern terminus is at Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz. Hollywood Boulevard is famous for running through the tourist areas in central Hollywood, including attractions such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Ovation Hollywood shopping and entertainment complex.
Broadway, until 1890 Fort Street, is a thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The portion of Broadway from 3rd to 9th streets, in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, was the city's main commercial street from the 1910s until World War II, and is the location of the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.
The Homer Laughlin Building, at 317 South Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles, is a landmark building best known for its ground floor tenant the Grand Central Market, the city's largest and oldest public market that sees 2 million visitors a year.
John and Donald Parkinson were a father-and-son architectural firm operating in the Los Angeles area in the early 20th century. They designed and built many of the city's iconic buildings, including Grand Central Market, the Memorial Coliseum, and City Hall.
The Eastern Columbia Building, also known as the Eastern Columbia Lofts, is a thirteen-story Art Deco building designed by Claud Beelman located at 849 S. Broadway in the Broadway Theater District of Downtown Los Angeles. It opened on September 12, 1930, after just nine months of construction. It was built at a cost of $1.25 million as the new headquarters and 39th store for the Eastern-Columbia Department Store, whose component Eastern and Columbia stores were founded by Adolph Sieroty and family. At the time of construction, the City of Los Angeles enforced a height limit of 150 feet (46 m), however the decorative clock tower was granted an exemption, allowing the clock a total height of 264 feet (80 m). J. V. McNeil Company was the general contractor.
Spring Street in Los Angeles is one of the oldest streets in the city. Along Spring Street in Downtown Los Angeles, from just north of Fourth Street to just south of Seventh Street is the NRHP-listed Spring Street Financial District, nicknamed Wall Street of the West, lined with Beaux Arts buildings and currently experiencing gentrification. This section forms part of the Historic Core district of Downtown, together with portions of Hill, Broadway, Main and Los Angeles streets.
Security Trust and Savings, also known as Security Trust, Security Pacific Bank, Security Bank Building, and Cahuenga Building, is a historic seven-story office building on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It is notable for its architecture, its history with Hollywood, and its association with fictional detective Phillip Marlowe.
Walker & Eisen (1919−1941) was an architectural partnership of architects Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen in Los Angeles, California.
The Metropolitan Building, in Los Angeles, California, was completed in 1913 and is one of a number of buildings built along Broadway in the early decades of the twentieth century for commercial and retail uses in what had then become the busiest and largest shopping district of the city. Located at the intersection of W. 5th Street and S. Broadway, the Metropolitan Building replaced a two-story, Romanesque Revival style building with storefronts on S. Broadway and W. 5th Street. This building was called the Mueller Building for its owner, Michail Mueller. The date of the building's construction is not known, nor has any additional information about it been located.
The Brockman Building is a 12-story Beaux-Arts, Classical, and Romanesque Revival style building located on 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles.
The Taft Building is a historic twelve-story building at 6280 W. Hollywood Blvd. and 1680 North Vine Street, Hollywood and Vine, in Hollywood, California.
Hollywood Plaza Hotel, also known as Plaza Hotel, was a 200-room hotel located at 1633–37 North Vine Street in Hollywood, California, just south of Hollywood and Vine. A popular venue for film, radio, and theatre stars of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the building was converted into a retirement home in the 1970s.
B. H. Dyas Co. was a Los Angeles sporting goods retailer that turned into a department store and went out of business in the 1930s, owned by Bernal Hubert Dyas (1882–1959).
The Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District is a historic district that consists of twelve blocks between the 6200 and 7000 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. This strip of commercial and retail businesses, which includes more than 100 buildings, is recognized for its significance with the entertainment industry, particularly Hollywood and its golden age, and it also features the predominant architecture styles of the 1920s and 1930s.
Boadway Bros. or Boadway's was a chain of upscale department stores in Southern California and New Mexico during the 1910s and 1920s, which started with a single store in Pasadena carrying furniture.
Equitable Building of Hollywood, also known as the Bank of Hollywood Building and The Lofts at Hollywood and Vine, is a historic twelve-story former office building, now condominium located at 6253 W. Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California, at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.
The Hollywood Professional Building, also known as SEVENTY46, is a historic eight-story building at 7046 W. Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, California. The Los Angeles Department of City Planning describe the building as exhibiting "character defining features of Neo-Gothic style architecture" and the United States Department of the Interior describe it as "an excellent example of Neo-Gothic commercial design."
Frederick Rice Dorn was an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. He was involved in numerous commercial and residential projects in the city during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Rialto Theater, formerly Quinn's Rialto Theater and Grauman’s Rialto, is a historic former movie theater located at 812 S. Broadway in the Broadway Theater District in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles.
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