Bradbury Building - Los Angeles, CA - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

The building was commissioned by Lewis Bradbury (after whom it is named), a mining millionaire who had become a real estate developer in the later part of his life. His plan (in 1892) was to have a five story building constructed at Third Street and Broadway in Los Angeles, close to the Bunker Hill neighborhood.

A local architect, Sumner Hunt, was first hired to complete a design for the building but Bradbury ruled against constructing his plans which he did not view as adequately matching the grandeur of his vision.


Bradbury Bldg., 2005Bradbury then hired George Wyman, one of Hunt's draftsmen, to design the building.

Wyman at first refused the offer to design the building. However Wyman supposedly had a ghostly talk with his dead brother Mark Wyman (who had been dead for six years) while using a planchette board with his wife. The ghostly message that came through supposedly said "Mark Wyman / take the / Bradbury building / and you will be / successful" with the word "successful" written upside down. After the episode, Wyman took the job and is now regarded as the architect of the Bradbury Building. Wyman's grandson, the science fiction publisher Forrest J. Ackerman, owns the original of this document. Coincidentally, Ackerman is a close friend of science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

Wyman was especially influenced in the construction of the building by Edward Bellamy's book Looking Backward (published in 1887) which described a utopian society in the year 2000. In the book, the average commercial building was described as a "vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above ... The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior." This description greatly influenced the Bradbury Building.

A restoration and seismic retrofitting by developer Ira Yellin and project architect Brenda Levin Associates was undertaken in 1991. As part of the restoration, a storage area at the south end of the building was converted to a new rear entrance portico, connecting the building more directly to Biddy Mason Park and the adjacent Broadway Spring Center parking garage. The building's lighting system was also redesigned, bringing in alabaster wall sconces from Spain.

Street address: 304 S. Broadway, Los Angeles County / Borough / Parish: Los Angeles Year listed: 1971 Historic (Areas of) Significance: Architecture/Engineering Periods of significance: 1875-1899 Historic function: Commerce/Trade Current function: Commerce/Trade Privately owned?: yes Primary Web Site: [Web Link] Season start / Season finish: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Secondary Website 1: Not listed Secondary Website 2: Not listed National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed

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