Completed in 1929, the Wilshire Tower answered developer A.W. Ross's audacious gamble on the Miracle Mile, a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard he fought to have rezoned for commercial use starting in 1923. Built for Desmond's department store, the tower became the first major retailer to commit to Ross's then speculative vision for an automobile-oriented shopping district explicitly located outside the old downtown core. The Los Angeles Conservancy credits this building as the earliest significant structure in the neighborhood, the anchor that helped Ross attract the wave of stores and offices that built out the rest of the Miracle Mile through the 1930s. As the literal proof of concept for suburban, drive-to-shop commercial corridors, this single department store commission holds an outsized place in the history of American retail and urban planning.
The nine-story tower combines two variations of Art Deco in a single composition: an eight-story Zigzag Moderne rectangle of offices vaulting skyward from a wide Streamline Moderne base. The sidewalk display windows were trimmed in rich black and red granite, drawing shoppers from their automobiles into the ground-floor retail spaces. Inside, the lobby featured fourteen karat gold ceiling detailing, an extravagance that signaled Desmond's confidence in the Miracle Mile's future. The tower's height and stepped massing made it visible from blocks away along the boulevard, serving as a beacon for the new commercial district taking shape around it.
