Garfield Building

The Garfield Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Claud Wilbur Beelman, and built between 1928 and 1930 in Los Angeles, CA.

Its precise street address is 403 W. Eighth Street, Los Angeles, CA. You can also find it on the map here.

The Garfield 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 Garfield Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on June 25^th 1982, and was also included in the Los Angeles Register of Historic Places on March 17^th 1982.

The building underwent a major restoration in 1970.

Claud Wilbur Beelman 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 at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Sun Realty Company as the Main Developer.

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

The Garfield Building was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The Garfield 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 a cream-colored terracotta cladding, with recedes on the third floor creating a U-shaped plane for the upper floors. At the top of the building there is a small square tower. Stylized floral reliefs accentuate the spandrels on the vertical window bands, while sun patterns adorn the lower floors.

Other materials found at the Garfield Building include, wrought iron, used at the entrnace canopy, polished nickel, found in the lobby accessories, and black and purple marble, alternating in bands on the walls and floors of the lobby.