Misplaced Pages

James Oviatt Building
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 195
James Oviatt Building, 2008
Show map of the Los Angeles metropolitan areaShow map of CaliforniaShow map of the United States
Location	617 S. Olive St., Los Angeles
Coordinates	34°2′51″N 118°15′14″W / 34.04750°N 118.25389°W / 34.04750; -118.25389
Built	1927–1928
Architect	Walker & Eisen; Feil & Paradise
Architectural style	Art Deco Italian Romanesque
NRHP reference No.	83004529
LAHCM No.	195
Added to NRHP	August 11, 1983

The James Oviatt Building, commonly referred to as The Oviatt Building, is an Art Deco 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. It is also designated as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.

The building is home to the Cicada Restaurant and Lounge.

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 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 Art Deco 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 and the Ku Klux Klan, 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 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 with chimes (manufactured by the pioneering electric clockmaker, Ateliers Brillié Frères ) were imported from France.

In popular culture

In the 1943 novel The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler, the fictional "Treloar Building" on Olive Street near Sixth, with its "vast black and gold lobby" and elegant style, is often taken as a description of the Oviatt Building.

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 and the Oscar-winning Mank.

Under the Rose Productions, an LA based theatre company produced an immersive play entitled “Castle in the Sky”, loosely based on James Oviatt’s residency in the top floor penthouse apartment during prohibition. A short making of documentary is included as bonus material with the feature-length documentary.

See also

• List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles
• List of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in Downtown Los Angeles

References

1. "James Oviatt Building". United States Department of the Interior - National Park Service. August 11, 1983.
2. "MAXWELL DEMILLE'S CICADA CLUB". cicadaclub.com.
3. OLIVE GRAY (August 12, 1931). "ALEXANDER AND OVIATT GOAL WON :Twentieth Anniversary of Store Marks Realization of Cherished Dreams". Los Angeles Times. p. A7. ProQuest 384752111..
4. http://www.saint-anthonys.org/archive/oviatt_building_history.pdf
5. George Thayer (writer), ed. (1967). The Farther Shores of Politics: The American Political Fringe Today (First ed.). Simon and Schuster. pp. 144–145. ISBN 0671246666.
6. Ward, Elizabeth; Silver, Alain (1987). Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Wooodstock, NY: Overlook Press. p. 50. ISBN 0-87951-266-0.
7. "The Oviatt Building".
8. "Scene It Before: Hotel Cortez from American Horror Story: Hotel Los Angeles Magazine". October 29, 2015.
9. "Inside the Creepiest Rooms at American Horror Story's Hotel Cortez". October 28, 2015.
10. "Five Things We Love About AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL, Episode 501 | Blumhouse.com". Archived from the original on November 15, 2015. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
11. "Filming Locations for Bruce Almighty (2003) in Los Angeles".
12. "Movies Filmed at James Oviatt Building".
13. "Under the Rose | interactive live experiences | Los Angeles, CA, USA". Under The Rose Produ. Retrieved May 22, 2024.

External links

• Oviatt Building documentary

• 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