The Delphi Hotel
National Register of Historic Places is a 12-story hotel located at 550 S Flower St in

Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of the city of Los Angeles. It is part of the Central Los Angeles region and covers a area. As of 2020, it contains over 500,000 jobs and has a population of roughly 85,000 residents ...

in the marble-clad high-rise Superior Oil Company Building formerly the headquarters of the now defunct company, converted to The Standard Downtown LA hotel in 2002, then closed in 2020 and reopened in 2023 under its current name.

History

Office building

The marble-clad Superior Oil Company Building was constructed from 1955–1956 as an

office building An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

by the Keck family"'50s-Era Downtown High-Rise Slated to Be Turned Into Hotel"
Jesus Sanchez, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'', January 25, 2000 to serve as the headquarters for the ''Superior Oil Company''. Designed by

Claud Beelman Claud W. Beelman (1884 – January 30, 1963), sometimes known as Claude Beelman, was an American architect who designed many examples of Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts, Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne style buildings. Many of his buildings ...

in the Late Moderne style, the 12-story structure was built by The William Simpson Construction Company. The tower's design has been described as showing "how the oft-overlooked Beelman advanced the type and style of mid-century office buildings." It was given distinctive marble, granite, and stainless-steel surfaces. The building's design featured motifs particular to Superior Oil, including stylized "S" door pulls for the entrances and a

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

-style metal sculpture of an oilfield and refinery landscape above the Flower Street entrance interior. According to the ''

'', it became "one of the area's most significant examples of the postwar modernism style popular in corporate architecture during the 1950s." The LA Conservancy calls the building "one of the finest examples of the Corporate Moderne style in Los Angeles and stands out as one of the strongest designs of architect Claud Beelman’s later career.""The Standard, Downtown LA"
laconservancy.org The architecture represents a "simplified, abstracted redefinition" of Beelman's earlier explorations in the Late Moderne styles, also incorporating

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

principles to "create a refined new corporate idiom." The building uses steel framing and a "pier and spandrel system" similar to those pioneered by

Louis Sullivan Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called a "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He was an influential architect of the Chicago school (architecture), Chicago ...

. In a twist, however, the piers are clad in white marble and the recessed spandrels are ribbed stainless steel between window spaces, emphasizing the vertical nature of the architecture. In 1963, the building became the

southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

headquarters of the

Bank of California The Bank of California was opened in San Francisco, California, on July 4, 1864, by William Chapman Ralston and Darius Ogden Mills. It was the first commercial bank in the Western United States, and considered instrumental in developing the Amer ...

, and for a time the building was called the Bank of California Building. The building was vacated in 1992, after the Bank of California was merged into Union Bank of California.

Downtown Standard Hotel

By 2000, local preservation groups were expressing worries that the vacant structure would be gutted and used as a telecommunications switching station, like other office buildings in the area. In January 2000, it was reported that the Union Bank of California had sold the building to William Gustafson and Mark Neumann's Columbia Development, "a Manhattan Beach-based hotel investment and development firm," for an undisclosed sum. With backing from local preservation groups, it was to be the "central city's first major new hotel in nearly a decade." Columbia Development Group, in partnership with

Bear Stearns The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was an American investment bank, securities trading, and brokerage firm that failed in 2008 during the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. After its closure it was subsequently sold to JPMorgan Chas ...

, JPMorgan Partners and Standard Holdings, converted the office building into a hotel operated by The Standard Hotels chain, run by Andre Balazs, which had opened its first boutique hotel in Hollywood in 1999. The conversion was designed by Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Inc."The Standard"
American Institute of Architects, November 16, 2012 and was constructed by Sam Martel of Taisei Construction. Christy McAvoy of Historical Resources Group was the historic preservation consultant. The Standard Downtown LA opened in May 2002 as a 207-room boutique hotel, with a rooftop pool and bar with space for DJs
Jordan Rane, CNN, October 20, 2017 and pool parties, a

beer garden A beer garden (German: ''Biergarten'') is an outdoor area in which beer and food are served, typically at shared tables shaded by trees. Beer gardens originated in Bavaria, of which Munich is the capital city, in the 19th century, and remain co ...

, a

ping pong Table tennis (also known as ping-pong) is a racket sport derived from tennis but distinguished by its playing surface being atop a stationary table, rather than the court on which players stand. Either individually or in teams of two, players ...

club, a 24-hour coffee shop and a lobby lounge. In 2011, '' Los Angeles Weekly'' included the building's rooftop restaurant as number 5 on its "Top 10 Restaurants in Buildings Designed by Significant Los Angeles Architects" list."Top 10 Restaurants in Buildings Designed by Significant Los Angeles Architects"
Jessica Ritz, '' Los Angeles Weekly'', January 26, 2011 The pool on the roof has three "water-bed cabanas housed in plastic pods that resemble something out of a 1960s sci-fi movie.""The Standard Downtown L.A. – Best Of :: Arts & Entertainment"
Jennifer Swann, '' Los Angeles Weekly'', 2013 In 2003, the building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

based on its architecture, particularly its moderne style and engineering. Also in 2003, The Standard Hotel Downtown was awarded the Los Angeles Conservancy's preservation award, for "bringing a youthful buzz to a 1955 modernist skyscraper on Flower Street downtown." In 2009, the operator of the Standard Hotel was charged with dumping pool chemicals into the street below in a violation of federal environmental laws."Operator of Standard Hotel in Los Angeles Charged in Dumping of Chemicals that Caused Illnesses in Subway"
January 29, 2009, FBI Standard Hotel pled guilty for the incident in 2010.
Corina Knoll, ''

'', March 23, 2010 A shooting resulted in a death outside the hotel lobby in 2015."1 killed in shooting outside The Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles"
ABC, December 13, 2015"1 Dead, 1 Paralyzed In Shooting Inside Lobby Of Standard Hotel In Downtown Los Angeles"
CBS, December 13, 2015 In 2016, an injured bystander to the shootout sued the hotel, alleging insufficient security."Man Sues Standard Hotel in Dowtown [sic
L.A. for 2015 Shooting"">ic">"Man Sues Standard Hotel in Dowtown [sic
L.A. for 2015 Shooting" LA Watts Times, June 2, 2016 In May 2017, the food festival Smorgasburg LA debuted a popup residency at the Standard Hotel."Smorgasburg LA Is Debuting A Rooftop Pop-Up At The Standard"
, Oren Peleg, LAist, May 15, 2017"Smorgasburg Is Coming to The Standard Hotel Downtown"
Katherine Spiers, ''

LA Weekly ''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. The paper covers music, arts, film, theater, culture, and other local news in the Los Angeles area. ''LA Weekly'' was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin (among others), ...

'', May 13, 2017 The hotel closed temporarily in early 2020, due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. In December 2021, it was announced that the closure would be permanent as of January 22, 2022.

Delphi Hotel

The hotel reopened on April 1, 2023 as the Delphi Hotel.

In popular culture

*The building entrance and exterior served as the fictional Brent Building in the television series ''

Perry Mason Perry Mason is a fictional character, an American criminal defense lawyer who is the main character in works of detective fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and four short stories, all of which involve a ...

'' (1957–1966) in which Mason's office"The Brent Building"
Perry Mason TV Series was located in Suite 904. *In the 1987 film ''

RoboCop ''RoboCop'' is a 1987 American Science fiction film, science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen (actress), Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Dani ...

'' the building can be seen in the 6000 SUX car commercial. *Significant portions of the 2005 film ''

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ''Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'' is a 2005 American neo-noir black comedy crime film written and directed by Shane Black (in his directorial debut), and starring Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, and Corbin Bernsen. The script is ...

'' were filmed outside the hotel and in the hotel's lobby, guest rooms, coffee shop, and rooftop bar/pool. *The building was featured in the 2010 film '' Get Him to the Greek''. *In the 2015 film '' San Andreas'', the building collapsed during an earthquake. *The building was featured in the 2018 film '' Under the Silver Lake''.

References

External links

The Delphi Hotel official websiteLA Conservancy
* ttp://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/view/examiner-m3345.html USC Digital Library: Superior Oil Building, 550 S. Flower St., Los Angeles, 1957 {{Clear Buildings and structures in Downtown Los Angeles Skyscraper hotels in Los Angeles Oil company headquarters in the United States ExxonMobil buildings and structures Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles Office buildings completed in 1956 1955 establishments in California 1950s architecture in the United States Modernist architecture in California Hotels established in 2002 Hotels established in 2023 Hotel buildings completed in 1956