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Nothing on the
bland brick exterior of the Bradbury Building hints at its soaring,
skylight-topped interior; certainly one of the more magical spaces
in Los Angeles. Enhanced by gleaming yellow brick walls and Belgian
marble staircases, accented by exquisite foliate iron grillwork, polished
wood, and two Victorian-styled bird cage elevators, its design was
influenced by an 1887 best-selling book, Looking Backward by Edward
Bellamy. Bellamy glowingly described a utopian civilization in the
year 2000, including a building with a "vast hall full of light, received
not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point
of which was 100 feet above....The walls were frescoed in mellow tints,
to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior..."
Among the many movies that were filmed here it is perhaps most famous
for being in Ridley Scott's classic Blade Runner (1982). Kevin Starr
writes in his book Material Dreams, "Set in the twenty-first century,
Blade Runner depicted Los Angeles as a city in which runaway technology
had all but blocked out the sun. In this dystopia only the Bradbury
Building seemed still capable of receiving the light." |
Louis Bradbury,
who made millions in mining and real estate, asked an inexperienced
draftsman, George Wyman, to undertake the $125,000 commission that
originally had been assigned to Wyman's employer, famed architect
Sumner Hunt. Completed in 1893 the actual cost of The Bradbury Building
rose to $500,000. Wyman said he took the job after communing with
his dead brother through a Ouija board. His brother told him: "Take
the Bradbury; it will make you famous." As for Bradbury, he died
before the building was completed.
Bradbury
Building
304 South Broadway
Mon. - Fri. 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Sat. & Sun. 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Look South
on Broadway as you leave the building...
Next door is
Ross Cutlery, where a certain knife was allegedly purchased that
figured prominently in the latest of L. A.'s many "trials of the
century."
In the block
north of the Bradbury is a view of one of Los Angeles' most recognizable
murals on the side of Victor Clothing Company....
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