The CalEdison (Los Angeles, California) | office building, bank, Art Deco (architecture)

 office building, bank, Art Deco (architecture)

www.thecaledison.com/

Designed in 1929 by Allison & Allison.
This building opened in March 1931 as the Southern California Edison Company Ltd. corporate headquarters.
First "all-electric" commercial structure in the western United States.
The fourteen-story, steel-framed building follows a classically inspired Art Deco design. The lower three stories are of solid limestone, while the upper stories and central tower are faced with buff-colored terra cotta.
On the façade, the spandrels contain a cubic Art Deco pattern, repeated in the central tower, lobby floor and elevator ceilings.
On the entry façade allegorical figures by sculptor Merrell Gage represent, light, power and hydroelectric energy.
The huge lobby has 30 foot high ceilings and was finished in at least 17 varieties of marble.
The 9x18 foot interior mural, the "Apotheosis of Power," was painted in 1930 by Hugo Ballin and is located above the 5th Street entry. The painting represents Edison Company as the source from which water and power flow. The figures painted on the right are Benjamin Franklin and Dr. William Gilbert. Benjamin Franklin who was a scientist, inventor, a philosopher, a statesman and a musician (1706-1790) was depicted in this painting because of his achievements in studies of electricity and experiments with lighting. Dr. William Gilbert, was an English scientist and physician to Queen Elisabeth. In his famous book "De Magnete" (1600), he was the first to describe the earth's magnetic field and to assume the relationship between electricity and magnetism. He introduced the term "electricity."

The exterior greenhouse-like structures were added in the 1980s and the street-level shopping corridor in 1993.

Find out more
www.ci.la.ca.us/ANGELSWALK/22.htm