The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark in downtown Los Angeles, California, United States. Built in 1893, and is the city's oldest landmarked building.

History

19th century

Lewis L. Bradbury, Sr. (November 6, 1823 – July 15, 1892) was a 19th century millionaire who made his fortune in mining and real estate In 1892 he began planning to construct a five-story building at Broadway and Third Street in Los Angeles, close to the Bunker Hill neighborhood. A local architect, Sumner Hunt, was hired to design the building, and turned in a completed design, but Bradbury dismissed Hunt's plans as inadequate to the grand building he wanted. He then hired George Wyman, one of Hunt's draftsmen, to do the design. Bradbury supposedly felt that Wyman understood his own vision of the building better than Hunt did, but there is no concrete evidence that Wyman changed Hunt's design, which has raised some controversy about who should be considered to be the architect of the building.

20th century

The building has operated as an office building for most of its history. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977. It was purchased by developer and champion of downtown restoration Ira Yellin in the early 1980s, who invested $7 million in restoration, and other government agencies. The LAPD Board of Rights holds officer discipline hearings here, and within the force it is given the nickname "the Ovens", because officers see it as the place they "get burned." The LAPD has a 50-year lease on their space. In 2007, the Morono Kiang Gallery of Chinese art opened in the building.

Several of the offices are rented out to private concerns, including Red Line Tours. The retail spaces on the first floor currently house Ross Cutlery, where O. J. Simpson purchased a stiletto that figured in his murder trial, a Subway sandwich restaurant, a Blue Bottle Coffee shop, and a real estate sales office for loft conversions in other nearby historic buildings.

, the Berggruen Institute maintains its offices in the building.

, a new co-working space operated by the property management company of the building, Downtown Properties, has officially opened called Bradbury Studios. It includes soft seating in the atrium, conference and meeting rooms, event spaces, and the private speakeasy called the Wyman Bar operated by NeueHouse exclusively available to building tenants, social members, and their guests.

Architecture

thumb|[[Cast-iron filigree balustrades in the building's central atrium]]

The building's undistinguished exterior facade of brown brick, sandstone and terracotta detailing was designed in the commercial vernacular Italian Renaissance Revival style current at the time. Its interior is its most notable part.

The narrow entrance lobby, with its low ceiling and minimal light "has the look of a Parisian alley of arched windows", and opens into a bright naturally lit great "awe-inspiring cathedral-like"

The five-story central court features glazed and unglazed yellow and pink bricks, tiling, Italian marble, Mexican tile, decorative terracotta

File:Bradbury Building4.jpg|Front entrance

File:Bradbury Building5.jpg|Oblique view of central atrium from balcony

File:Bradbury Building8.jpg|Detail of stairway ironwork

File:Bradbury Fire,1947 crop.jpg|A fire in the building in 1947

File:Bradbury Atrium.jpg|Atrium

File:Bradbury_building_lobby_and_ceiling.jpg|The building's distinctive open elevator shafts and large glass skylight

File:Bradbury-elevator-Jan 2012.jpg|Elevator detail

File:Bradbury-elevator detail-Jan 2012.jpg|Detail of elevator metalwork

</gallery>

thumb|The Bradbury Building in [[Blade Runner]]

The Bradbury Building has been featured prominently as a setting in many films, television shows, and in literature—particularly in the science fiction genre. Most notably, the building is a setting in the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner, for the character J. F. Sebastian's apartment, and the climactic rooftop scene.

The Bradbury Building appeared in the noir films The Unfaithful (1947), Shockproof (1949), D.O.A. (1950) and I, The Jury (1953) (the latter filmed in 3-D). M (1951), a remake of the 1931 German film, contains a long search sequence filmed in the building, and a notable shot through the roof's skylight. The five-story atrium also substituted for the interior of the seedy skid row hotel depicted in the climax of Good Neighbor Sam (1964).

The building is also featured in China Girl (1942), The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), Indestructible Man (1956), Caprice (1967), Murphy's Law (1986), Midnight Cabaret (1990), The Dreamer of Oz (1990), Donato and Daughter (1993), Wolf (1994), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Pay It Forward (2000), What Women Want (2000), (500) Days of Summer (2009) and The Artist (2011).

Television series that featured the building include the 1964 The Outer Limits episode "Demon with a Glass Hand", and the 1962 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Double-Entry Mind". During the season six episodes (1963–64) of the series 77 Sunset Strip, the Stuart "Stu" Bailey character had his office in the Bradbury. In Quantum Leap the building is seen carrying the name "Gotham Towers" in "Play It Again, Seymour", the last episode of the first season (1989). The building appeared in at least one episode of the television series Banyon (1972–73), where it was used as Robert Forster's office, City of Angels (1976) and Mission: Impossible (1966–73), The building was used in the music video for "Icy", a 2019 song by South Korean girl group Itzy.

The Bradbury has frequently appeared in popular literature. In the "Nathan Heller" series of detective novels by Max Allan Collins, Heller's A-1 Detective Agency's Los Angeles offices are housed in the Bradbury, as shown in the novel Angel in Black. In the Star Trek novel The Case of the Colonist's Corpse: A Sam Cogley Mystery, the protagonist works from the Bradbury Building four hundred years in the future. Other appearances occur in The Man With The Golden Torc by Simon R. Green, Angels Flight The Black Box, and "The Drop," by Michael Connelly, and the science-fiction multiple novel series The World of Tiers by Philip José Farmer.

The building interior was shown in the title sequence for the TV series The Ray Bradbury Theater, which aired from 1985 to 1992.

See also

  • National Register of Historic Places listings in Los Angeles
  • List of contributing properties in the Broadway Theater and Commercial District
  • List of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in Downtown Los Angeles

References

  • The Bradbury Building
  • – Bradbury Building, A History
  • Los Angeles Conservancy
  • Bradbury Building at Atlas Obscura. Accessed 3/27/2026
  • BRmovie.com Blade Runner Film Locations
  • University of Southern California's L.A. Walking Tour
  • Inside the Bradbury Building webinar