Bullocks Wilshire Building

The Bullocks Wilshire Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Parkinson & Parkinson, and built between 1928 and 1929 in Los Angeles, CA.

Its precise street address is 3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA. You can also find it on the map here.

The Bullocks Wilshire Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Los Angeles and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the Bullocks Wilshire Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on May 25^th 1978, and was also included in the Los Angeles Register of Historic Places on June 15^th 1968.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1953 and 1997.

Parkinson & Parkinson was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Bullocks Wilshire Building a reality:

• John G. Bullock as the Main Developer
• Eneanor Lemaire, Jock Peters in charge of Interior Design
• Herman Sachs as the collaborating Artist

The Bullocks Wilshire Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Bullocks Wilshire Building was completed in 1929, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The Bullocks Wilshire Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features beige terracotta panels covering the exterior, alterning with older green copper paneles on the windows. The weathered copper also covers the top part of the tower.

Other materials found at the Bullocks Wilshire Building include, st Genevieve rose marble, seen in the interior walls, rosewood, used in display cases, frosted glass, found in doors and exhibitors, travertine marble, used in the interior floors, and painted glass, found in the tea room ceiling.