The James Oviatt Building, commonly referred to as The Oviatt Building, is an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

highrise in Downtown Los Angeles located on Olive Street, half a block south of 6th St. and Pershing Square. In 1983, the Oviatt Building was listed in the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artist ...

. It is also designated as a

Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments are sites which have been designated by the Los Angeles, California, Cultural Heritage Commission as worthy of preservation based on architectural, historic and cultural criteria. History The Historic-Cult ...

History

The building is named after James Zera Oviatt (1888-1974) who, in 1909, came from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles to work as a

window dresser Window dressers are retail workers who arrange displays of goods in shop windows or within a shop itself. Such displays are themselves known as "window dressing". They may work for design companies contracted to work for clients or for department s ...

at C.C. Desmond's Department Store. In 1912, Oviatt and a colleague, hat salesman Frank Baird Alexander, launched their partnership in men's clothing as the ''Alexander & Oviatt'' haberdashery, at 209 West Fourth Street in downtown Los Angeles. Their 'silent partner' was Frank Shaver Allen, a wealthy and once socially prominent architect whose career had been destroyed by a sex scandal several years earlier. During annual summer buying trips to Europe, Oviatt found stylish clothing to bring back to his prospering Los Angeles store. With the emergence of French

in the 1920s, Oviatt found the architectural style that would embody the interior design of his 1928 ''James Oviatt Building'' and its penthouse. In the 1950s and ‘60s, he funded white supremacist militias and anti-Semitic groups associated with

Wesley A. Swift Wesley A. Swift (September 6, 1913 – October 8, 1970) was a minister from Southern California who was known for his white supremacist views and was the central figure in Christian Identity from the 1940s until his death in 1970. Early life a ...

and the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Ca ...

, and distributed hate literature by mail to his business’s charge customers. Oviatt’s actions caused a public outcry and led customers to boycott his clothing store, causing it to close in 1966. The Oviatt Building was designed by the Los Angeles architectural firm of Walker & Eisen. Excavation for the Oviatt Building's construction was begun in August 1927; the building was completed in May 1928. Its furnishings included a 12-ton illuminated glass cornice and glass arcade ceiling by architect Ferdinand Chanut and glassmaker Gaëtan Jeannin.

René Lalique René Jules Lalique (6 April 1860 – 1 May 1945) was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments. Life Lalique' ...

designed and created the molded glass elevator door panels, front and side doors, chandeliers, and a large panel clock. Many tons of 'Napoleon' marble and a massive, three-faced

tower clock Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildin ...

with chimes (manufactured by the pioneering electric clockmaker, ''Ateliers Brillié Frères'' ) were imported from France.

In popular culture

A feature-length documentary on the Oviatt Building's history was directed by Seth Shulman and written/produced by Marc Chevalier in 2008. In 2015, the exterior of the Cicada was used as the exterior for the fictional Hotel Cortez on '' American Horror Story: Hotel''. The Cicada featured in various films such as ''

Bruce Almighty ''Bruce Almighty'' is a 2003 American fantasy comedy film directed by Tom Shadyac and written by Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk. The film stars Jim Carrey as Bruce Nolan, a down-on-his-luck television reporter who complains to G ...

'' and the Oscar-winning ''

Mank ''Mank'' is a 2020 American black-and-white biographical drama film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the screenplay for ''Citizen Kane'' (1941). It was directed by David Fincher based on a screenplay by his late ...

''.

References

External links

Oviatt Building documentary
{{Registered Historic Places Skyscraper office buildings in Los Angeles Buildings and structures in Downtown Los Angeles Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles Office buildings completed in 1927 1927 establishments in California Commercial buildings completed in 1928 Art Deco architecture in California

History

In popular culture

See also

References

External links