The May Company department store opened in 1939 as a flagship for westward retail expansion along Wilshire Boulevard, commissioned at a moment when the corridor was becoming the symbolic axis of automobile-era Los Angeles. The building embodied the shift of elite consumption from downtown toward new suburban affluence, arriving as Wilshire transformed into a commercial thoroughfare aligned with car culture and decentralization. Designed by Albert C. Martin Sr.'s office with input from Samuel A. Marx, the store represented the modernization of Los Angeles retail before World War II. Decades later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences acquired the structure for conversion into a museum, backed by major donors including Haim and Cheryl Saban.
The original building is a Streamline Moderne landmark defined by its gold mosaic cylinder at the Wilshire and Fairfax corner, a curved volume sheathed in glittering tile that anchors a long horizontal façade. Renzo Piano's intervention preserved and restored that cylindrical corner and the Wilshire elevation while hollowing and retrofitting the interior for galleries, education spaces, conservation labs, theater, and museum support. To the north, Piano added the spherical David Geffen Theater, a concrete and steel domed volume wrapped in glass and connected to the historic structure by a bridge. The design stages a deliberate contrast between 1930s retail glamour and 21st-century cultural transparency, with extensive restoration work returning the mosaic skin to its original luster while retaining the building's landmark profile.
