Park Plaza Hotel

Park Plaza Hotel
  1. About the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectural style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Park Plaza Hotel is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Curlett & Beelman, and built between 1923 and 1926 in Los Angeles, CA.

Park Plaza Hotel is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

  • Elks Lodge No. 99.
  • Elk's Temple 99.
  • Elk's Club 99.
  • Elks Building.
  • The MacArthur from 2019 until this day.

Its precise street address is 607 Park View Street, Los Angeles, CA. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2016 and 2020.

Building's timeline

Construction begins
1923
101
Construction completed
1926
98
The MacArthur
2019
5
a
Restoration
2020
4
years ago
2024
  1. 2016 to 2020 - Renovation.

Architect and team

Curlett & 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 here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Park Plaza Hotel a reality:

  • Scofield Engineering Construction Company as the Main Contractor
  • Anthony Heinsbergen as the collaborating Artist

Architectural Style

The Park Plaza Hotel can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Park Plaza Hotel was completed in 1926, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

It has a total of 11 floors.

When it opened its doors to the public in 1926, the Park Plaza Hotel was primarily used as Hotel space. That however, is no longer the case, and today it mainly provides Cultural space.