Harriman Building (Downey, California)

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Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center is significant for its role in the evolution of the County of Los Angeles County’s provision of medical and social services to residents of the County. Beginning as the County Poor Farm in 1887/1888, it initially was an agricultural facility that provided work, housing, and medical care for the indigent to relieve the overburdened Los Angeles County Hospital system. By the 1910s, an increasing number of inmates with chronic medical disorders were being admitted to the County Poor Farm, causing a transition from providing rehabilitative, short-term treatment for the impoverished to a long-term patient care facility.

The construction of a new hospital building in 1930, originally named the Medical Building but long known as the Harriman Building, represented the shift from a County Poor Farm to a respected healthcare facility. The building was intended to be the first step in the implementation of a new master plan that would provide the spaces and equipment required to modernize medical care and was the first hospital building to be located in the portion of the property located north of Imperial Boulevard. Upon the completion of the new Medical Building, then-Superintendent William R. Harriman petitioned to change the name of the institution from the antiquated “County Farm” to “Rancho Los Amigos.” The new name was officially adopted in 1932.

Located north of Imperial Highway, the Harriman Building has become the symbol for the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, the most visible, one of the most architecturally accomplished, and the most widely recognized building of the institution.

www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/ca3833/