Commissioned by high-end haberdasher James Zera Oviatt in 1928, this downtown tower represents the pinnacle of late-1920s Los Angeles aspiration, combining a slender commercial high-rise with a glittering retail hall and penthouse residence. Walker & Eisen designed the building as both sophisticated urban commerce and personal fantasy, shaped by Oviatt's European buying trips and his desire to rival the luxury retail culture of Paris and New York. The structure captures a moment of supreme confidence in downtown's vertical future, completed just before the Depression would reshape the city's ambitions. It stands among the great examples of how imported luxury and metropolitan sophistication took root in interwar Los Angeles.
The building presents a comparatively restrained Art Deco tower exterior that conceals one of downtown's most spectacular interior environments. René Lalique contributed glass doors, lighting fixtures, and elevator panels that transform the retail hall into a jewel box of French decorative artistry. Imported marble surfaces complement the highly refined French-influenced decorative program, anchored by a dramatic French Deco clock that commands the commercial space. The penthouse residence above preserves one of the city's most extraordinary surviving Art Deco domestic interiors, complete with custom details that reflect Oviatt's exacting standards for Continental luxury.
