For years before World War II, the Eastern Columbia Building at Broadway and 9th Street stood not just as one of Los Angeles' tallest buildings but also as one of its most distinctive.
Built just after the stock market crash of 1929, the 264-foot-tall building was one of the few allowed to exceed Los Angeles pre-war 150-foot height limit. But it was the Eastern Columbia's Art Deco style -- with its shiny turquoise terra cotta, clean lines, streamlined shapes and stylized figures -- that really set it apart.
Now, after almost 74 years as a department store, office space and movie backdrop, the Eastern Columbia Building is changing yet again -- this time into condominiums.
When Adolph Sieroty, president of Eastern Outfitting Co., commissioned architect Claud Beelman to design the structure in 1929, he wanted space to house his business offices as well as a sales outlet for his company's clothing and other goods.
A 1929 Times article reported that Beelman had traveled to New York, Boston, Detroit and other Eastern cities to search for advanced ideas about how to build a tall but architecturally distinctive building.
Construction on the 13-story Eastern Columbia Building was completed in nine months. (Beelman was also the architect for the Superior Oil Building, which now houses the downtown Standard Hotel.)
In September 1930, the Eastern Columbia opened and was hailed as one of the most distinctive examples of Art Deco style -- a style that flourished through the 1920s and '30s. Its facade was trimmed in gleaming gold and dark blue terra cotta and adorned with sunburst patterns, zigzags and chevrons. Even the sidewalks surrounding the building sported red, black and gold terrazzo zigzags and chevrons.
"If you were to name two buildings that are the great Art Deco towers of Los Angeles, it would be the Pellissier Building, which rises above the Wiltern Theatre, and the Eastern Columbia Building," said Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy.
The vertical lines of the Art Deco style make the Eastern Columbia Building appear larger than it actually is, Bernstein said. Adding to the structure's height is its four-sided clock tower, which flaunts large neon clocks and the word "Eastern" in neon lights. For years, the tower displayed the time and chimed a song every 15 minutes.
The clocks are now silent, frozen in time, and the neon lights are dark.
