Getting the Skinny on a Tall Valley Landmark

They're living large at the skinny skyscraper.

It's the high-rise with the human scale -- the place where office workers are likely to know everyone's name on every floor. The place where every desk is in a corner window office.

"Even our closet has a window with a view," says Cherry Hepburn, whose two-person management company occupies the building's top floor and boasts a Los Angeles panorama like no other.

Hepburn can stand in the middle of her office and gaze south over the Cahuenga Pass. If she turns her head north, she is looking at the Newhall Pass.

Her office is atop a slender, 165-foot-tall, 35-foot-wide building near the Hollywood Freeway's Victory Boulevard offramp that has been a North Hollywood landmark for 43 years.

It was the tallest building in the San Fernando Valley when its steel frame and precast wall sections rose out of the Valley Plaza Shopping Center in 1960. In those days its 100 thriving stores and shops made up what was believed to be the largest retail complex west of Chicago.

The narrow office tower was viewed by Valley Plaza developer Bob Symonds as a beacon that drew shoppers from 10 miles in all directions, says grandson Jeff Symonds, who helps run the shopping center today.

The Los Angeles Federal Savings and Loan Assn. spent $1 million on the building, including land and construction costs. Modernist architects Douglas Honnold and John Rex were hired to give the project the maximum bang for its buck.

The thin budget made for a lean building. And that made it a standout in the low-rise suburban setting.

"It was a matter of looks rather than size. They didn't want to exceed their budget, so they designed it so its height gave it a look of status, power and influence," said North Hollywood historian Guy Weddington McCreary, whose family's Valley roots extend to 1886.

Honnold, whose other work included collaborating with Richard Neutra on downtown's Los Angeles County Hall of Records and designing jutting-roof Tiny Naylor's and Ship's restaurants, knew what to do.

He drew up the North Hollywood tower to look as if it were emerging on legs from the shopping center parking lot and storefronts beneath it.

The building itself seems to be suspended between a pair of giant handles reaching nearly 12 stories in the air. Two thick beams at the top connect girders on the north side of the building with those on the south side. Besides giving the structure extra height, the top beams are used as identifying signs.