Fine Arts Building (Los Angeles)
| Fine Arts Building | |
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Fine Arts Building Los Angeles
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| Location | 811 West 7th Street, Los Angeles |
| Coordinates | 34°02′57″N 118°15′32″W / 34.0492°N 118.2590°WCoordinates: 34°02′57″N 118°15′32″W / 34.0492°N 118.2590°W |
| Built | 1927 |
| Architectural style(s) | Romanesque Revival |
| Designated | April 17, 1974 |
| Reference no. | 125 |
The landmark Fine Arts Building is located at 811 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Also known as the Global Marine House, it was declared a historic cultural monument in 1974.
The building was designed by the architects Albert Raymond Walker (1881–1958) and Percy Augustus Eisen (1885–1946) in 1927. It is a compact twelve-storey block on an H-shaped plan with a facing of smooth and squared slabs of light-coloured stone.
The first three storeys present a striking façade with a trapezoidal profile. The façade rises the entire height of the building, the side of which on the street is divided into three horizontal registers that echo the classic arrangement of a Renaissance palace in distinct lower, central and upper sections. In the Fine Arts Building as in its ancient Italian models, being closest to the eye of the beholder, the bottom section is the part on which the most sumptuous decoration and precise architectural definition is lavished.
The façade's central axis is emphasized by a large entrance portal, with a rounded arch that rises the height of two storeys. This deep, splayed passageway has an arched lintel decorated with plant motifs that introduces serried ranks of arches on either side. They are resting alternately on small columns and pillars variously decorated with fantastic creatures and inlaid geometric patterns. The wall beneath the great arch is densely worked with volutes of acanthus leaves and concatenated circles simulating rope made entirely of terracotta reliefs. The entrance is divided in two by a column of green marble with a capital and decorated entablature on which the two smaller arches rest.
Echoes of the architecture of the temple and the religious edifice return boldly in the three uppermost storeys, with a double order of arches on spiral columns, capitals decorated with foliage, and keystones with small animal heads. A tympanum with a curious internal colonnade crowns the façade in a riot of minute decoration and majestic architectural sculpture groups.
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