Edgemar
| Edgemar | |
|---|---|
Main Facade of Edgemar
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| General information | |
| Location | Santa Monica, CA |
| Address | 2415–2449 Main Street |
| Country | USA |
| Coordinates | 34°00′12″N 118°29′06″W / 34.0033704°N 118.4849574°WCoordinates: 34°00′12″N 118°29′06″W / 34.0033704°N 118.4849574°W |
| Construction started | 1984 |
| Completed | 1988 |
| Technical details | |
| Floor area |
Retail: 15,779 ft (4,809 m) Office: 8,106 ft (2,471 m) Restaurant: 3,405 ft (1,038 m) Theater Center: 6,350 ft (1,940 m) plus mezzanine Artist Lofts: 1,886 ft (575 m) plus mezzanine |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect |
Buildings: Frank O. Gehry and Associates, Inc. Landscape: Emmet Wemple |
| Developer | Sher Development |
| Website | |
| www.edgemar.com | |
Edgemar, located at 2415–2449 Main Street in Santa Monica, California, is a mixed-use shopping center designed by architect Frank Gehry that combines early 19th century warehouses, a 1940s Art Deco office building and new construction.
In 1908, the Imperial Ice Company built an 8,000 square foot warehouse at the back of its property at 2435 Main Street in Santa Monica, California. Another 3,000 square foot warehouse was added beside it in 1928.
With the advent of refrigeration in the 1940s leading to a decline in the ice business, the Santa Monica Dairy Company, minority partners in the Imperial Ice Company, bought the property for the egg-processing division of their dairy. The Santa Monica Dairy Company, founded by Swiss immigrant Herman Michel, was the oldest dairy in Los Angeles County.
The company built a small Art Deco-style building with Main Street frontage for their offices. The 1908 warehouse became their “egg-candling room” in which eggs were held up to light to check for fertilization. The company's name was later changed to Edgemar Farms.
In 1983, the Michel Brothers sold their company to Foremost Dairy and placed the Main Street property on the market.
In 1984, Thomas Eatherton, an artist whose studio was in a 2,000 square foot metal outbuilding on the north end of the site, showed neighbor Abby Sher, who had a family history of development, the original ice warehouse with its 25-foot ceilings, clerestory windows, and 8,000 square feet of clear span, and suggested its use as a museum. Sher took the suggestion as the impetus for creating a small piazza-like setting with the museum as its centerpiece. Influences were the Tuscan hill town of Volterra, with its central piazza containing, along with the usual shops and cafes, an Etruscan museum and a large fresco-adorned municipal building; and the 1948 neighborhood shopping center, The Brentwood Country Mart. Sher purchased the Edgemar Farms property in October 1984, and retained the use of the name, Edgemar, for the development.
In the early 1980s, the model of melding art with commerce was being widely explored as a way to support art institutions. In planning or under construction at the time were the California Plaza project that incorporated the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, funded through the sale of zoning rights for the Museum Tower project; and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which opened in 1986 as part of South Coast Plaza.
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