Ernest McConnell was an American architect, who worked in-house for the Los Angeles Investment Company.
He designed the Charles C. Chapman Building (originally the Los Angeles Investment Company Building) at 756 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, 13 stories, built 1912 at a cost of $1 million, Beaux Arts style. [1] [2] [3]
The Globe Savings Bank also moved its headquarters to the new building. [4]
It is now in residential use as the "Chapman Flats" above the retail at street level. Charles C. Chapman — the first mayor of Fullerton and the chief patron of Chapman University in the city of Orange — bought the building for $1.6 million in 1920. [5]
The building is designated as City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument no. 899 and a contributing property to the Broadway Theater and Commercial District. [6]
McConnell also designed numerous Craftsman homes featured in a plan book that the Los Angeles Investment Co. published. The LAIC constructed many homes from those plans in various housing developments they built throughout Southern California. [2] [7]
McConnell oversaw the creation of all the designs in a 92-page catalog book that the Investment Co. released in 1912-3, titled Modern Homes of California. The book contained 77 architectural designs and photographs of mostly Arts and Crafts style bungalows across the Southland priced between $1500 and $5000, as well as 200 detailed illustrations of exterior and interior views, along with plans that provided accurate estimates for construction materials and labor costs. [8] [9] [10]
The Chateau Marmont is a hotel located at 8221 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The hotel was designed by architects Arnold A. Weitzman and William Douglas Lee and completed in 1929. It was modeled loosely after the Château d'Amboise, a royal retreat in France's Loire Valley.
Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, also known as Egyptian Hollywood and the Egyptian, is a historic movie theater located on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Opened in 1922, it is an early example of a lavish movie palace and is noted as having been the site of the world's first film premiere.
West Adams is a neighborhood in the South Los Angeles region of Los Angeles, California. The neighborhood is known for its large number of historic buildings, structures, notable houses, and mansions. It contains several Historic Preservation Overlay Zones as well as designated historic districts.
California bungalow is an alternative name for the American Craftsman style of residential architecture, when it was applied to small-to-medium-sized homes rather than the large "ultimate bungalow" houses of designers like Greene and Greene. California bungalows became popular in suburban neighborhoods across the United States, and to varying extents elsewhere, from around 1910 to 1939.
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.
Sumner P. Hunt was an architect in Los Angeles from 1888 to the 1930s. On January 21, 1892, he married Mary Hancock Chapman, January 21, 1892. They had a daughter Louise Hunt.
William James Dodd (1862–1930) was an American architect and designer who worked mainly in Louisville, Kentucky from 1886 through the end of 1912 and in Los Angeles, California from early 1913 until his death. Dodd rose from the so-called First Chicago School of architecture, though of greater influence for his mature designs was the classical aesthetic of the Beaux-Arts style ascendant after the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. His design work also included functional and decorative architectural glass and ceramics, furniture, home appliances, and literary illustration.
May Company California was an American chain of department stores operating in Southern California and Nevada, with headquarters at its flagship Downtown Los Angeles store until 1983 when it moved them to North Hollywood. It was a subsidiary of May Department Stores and merged with May's other Southern California subsidiary, J. W. Robinson's, in 1993 to form Robinsons-May.
Lester Sherwood Moore (1871–1924) was an American architect.
Myron Hubbard Hunt was an American architect whose numerous projects include many noted landmarks in Southern California and Evanston, Illinois. Hunt was elected a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects in 1908.
The STILE Downtown Los Angeles by Kasa, originally built as the California Petroleum Corporation Building and later known as the Texaco Building, is a 243 ft (74 m), 13-story highrise hotel and theater building located at 937 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, California. It was the tallest building in the city for one year after its completion in 1927, and was the tallest privately owned structure in Los Angeles until 1956. Its style is Spanish Gothic, patterned after Segovia Cathedral in Segovia, Spain.
Elmer Grey, FAIA was an American architect and artist based in Pasadena, California. Grey designed many noted landmarks in Southern California, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Huntington Art Gallery, the Pasadena Playhouse and Wattles Mansion. He is credited with being one of the pioneers in the development of the new American architecture in the early 20th century, with a focus on harmony with nature and eliminating features not belonging to the local climate and conditions. Grey was also a noted artist whose paintings are in the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Institute.
Samuel Tilden Norton, or S. Tilden Norton as he was known professionally, was a Los Angeles–based architect active in the first decades of the 20th century. During his professional career he was associated with the firm of Norton & Wallis, responsible for the design of many Los Angeles landmarks.
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 Bumiller Building is a residential building in the Los Angeles Historic Broadway Theater District. Built in 1906 and designed by the architects Morgan & Walls, the Bumiller Building was constructed of reinforced concrete in Renaissance Revival style. Historically the building has been a department store and a theater.
The Famous Department Store was a department store in Los Angeles, California.
7th Street is a street in Los Angeles, California running from S. Norton Ave in Mid-Wilshire through Downtown Los Angeles. It goes all the way to the eastern city limits at Indiana Ave., and the border between Boyle Heights, Los Angeles and East Los Angeles.
Una Nixson Hopkins was an American writer and designer, and an art director who worked in silent films.
Founded in 1899 by Charles Abbott Elder and his partners, the Los Angeles Investment Company (LAIC) quickly established itself as a significant player in real estate development across Southern California. Elder envisioned an approach that made homeownership accessible to middle-class individuals, relying on a model where small investors could pool funds to support large-scale property development. By promoting installment payment options, LAIC allowed everyday citizens to become homeowners, especially during a period of rapid growth in Los Angeles.