{"id":3779,"date":"2016-11-29T22:27:15","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T06:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=3779"},"modified":"2016-11-29T22:27:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T06:27:15","slug":"los-angeles-in-buildings-the-bradbury-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=3779","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles in Buildings: the Bradbury Building"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-3780\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/500-days-bradbury.jpg\" alt=\"500-days-bradbury\" width=\"599\" height=\"249\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/500-days-bradbury.jpg 640w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/500-days-bradbury-300x125.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Though most moviegoers will have seen a lot of Bradbury Building, they may not recognize it as a landmark of Los Angeles architecture \u2013 unless, of course, they&#8217;ve seen Thom Andersen&#8217;s documentary \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcet.org\/departures-columns\/thom-andersen-looking-back-at-los-angeles\">Los Angeles Plays Itself<\/a>,\u201d which devotes a solid block of its nearly three-hour runtime to the many roles it has played onscreen. \u201cThe movies discovered the Bradbury Building before the architectural historians did,\u201d says its narrator. \u201cThe earliest appearance I know came in 1943: in \u2018China Girl,\u2019 it played the Hotel Royale in Mandalay, Burma. The following year, in \u2018The White Cliffs of Dover,\u2019 it played a London military hospital overflowing with wounded soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Later films placed the Bradbury Building elsewhere: \u201cCaprice\u201d in Paris, \u201cWolf\u201d in New York, \u201cMurder in the First\u201d in San Francisco. These and other roles may demonstrate the structure&#8217;s versatility, but they&#8217;ve surely also caused some confusion as to its actual location. Anyone seeking to satisfy an interest in Los Angeles architecture, though, will hear about the Bradbury Building&#8217;s place in its canon before they hear about anything else. It found that place thanks, in large part, to its celebration by influential Southern California architectural historian and Arts &amp; Architecture Magazine contributor Esther McCoy, who launched her campaign in 1953, a decade after the building made its cinematic debut in \u201cChina Girl\u201d and six decades after it first opened.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is nothing whatever accidental about it,\u201d goes the quote from the magazine proudly included, for a time, on a handout provided to the Bradbury&#8217;s visitors. \u201cThere are no afterthoughts. It is a forever young building, out of a youthful and vigorous imagination. But it has left nothing to chance. Stairways leap into space because of endless calculations. The skylight is a fairy tale of mathematics.\u201d This praise, like almost all the praise heaped upon the building ever since, focuses on its interior. When observers mention the exterior at all, they do so only do dismiss it: David Gebhard and Robert Winter&#8217;s \u201cArchitectural Guidebook to Los Angeles\u201d describes its style as \u201cmildly Romanesque,\u201d but only in a parenthetical aside after they&#8217;ve first pronounced it \u201cdull.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcet.org\/shows\/lost-la\/los-angeles-in-buildings-the-bradbury-building\">at KCET<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though most moviegoers will have seen a lot of Bradbury Building, they may not recognize it as a landmark of Los Angeles architecture \u2013 unless, of course, they&#8217;ve seen Thom Andersen&#8217;s documentary \u201cLos Angeles Plays Itself,\u201d which devotes a solid block of its nearly three-hour runtime to the many roles it has played onscreen. \u201cThe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,9,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-los-angeles","category-los-angeles-in-buildings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3781,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions\/3781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}