Developed by the Dominguez family in the late 1920s, this ten story Art Deco office and retail tower represents an extraordinary convergence of California's colonial past and its Jazz Age future. The family descended from Juan Jose Dominguez, the Spanish soldier who received the first Spanish land grant in California, Rancho San Pedro, from King Carlos III in 1784. Their decision to invest rancho era wealth into Miracle Mile real estate made this tower a twentieth century commercial monument built on eighteenth century Spanish colonial land holdings. Morgan, Walls and Clements designed the building as one of several commissions the prolific firm executed along this stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, where Myer Siegel Department Store occupied the two floor retail base in the building's early decades.
The tower exemplifies Zigzag Moderne design, the angular, geometric variant of Art Deco that defined Los Angeles commercial architecture in the late 1920s and early 1930s. As one of the height limit towers permitted along the Miracle Mile, the building rises to its full ten story capacity, creating vertical punctuation along the boulevard's otherwise horizontal commercial landscape. The composition follows the typical formula for mixed use towers of the period, with retail space animating the street level podium while office floors stack above. Terra cotta ornament and geometric detailing characteristic of the Zigzag style articulate the facade, though the building maintains a more restrained presence compared to some of Morgan, Walls and Clements's more exuberant commissions like the Wiltern Theatre.
