The Capitol Records Building, also known as the Capitol Records Tower, is a 13-story tower building in the Hollywood neighborhood of

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, California, United States. Designed by Louis Naidorf of Welton Becket Associates, it is one of the city's landmarks, and is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. Construction began soon after British music company EMI acquired Capitol Records in 1955, and was completed in April 1956. Located just north of the Hollywood and Vine intersection, the Capitol Records Tower houses the consolidation of

Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...

' West Coast operations and is home to the recording studios and echo chambers of Capitol Studios. The building is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and sits in the Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District. It has been described as the "world's first circular office building." The building is known as "The House That Nat Built" due to the vast number of records and amount of merchandise

Nat King Cole Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, alternatively billed as Nat "King" Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's career as a jazz and Traditional pop, pop ...

sold for the company.

Design

The building's design is based on the graduate school drawings of Louis Naidorf who, as the primary architect, designed the first circular office building when he was 24 years old. The wide curved awnings over windows on each story and the tall spike emerging from the top of the building resembles a stack of records on a

turntable A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding phys ...

with the spindle pointing skyward. This resemblance, however, was coincidental, as Welton Becket kept the client's identity secret. Upon first seeing the design, Capitol Records' president Glen Wallichs insisted on a rectangular building, so Naidorf provided Wallichs with both. Wallichs presented both designs to his lender, who felt the round design would attract attention, which would make it easier to lease. Wallichs conceded, choosing Naidorf's initial round design. The rectangular ground floor is a separate structure, joined to the tower after completion. The 13-story building conforms to the zoning height limit in place at the time of its construction. Height restrictions were lifted in 1956. The thirteenth floor of the tower is the "Executive Level" and is represented by an "E" in the building's two elevators.

Notable features

The blinking light atop the tower spells out the word "Hollywood" in

Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...

. (.... --- .-.. .-.. -.-- .-- --- --- -..) This was an idea of Capitol's then-president, Alan Livingston, who wanted to advertise Capitol's status as the first record label with a base on the west coast. It was switched on by Leila Morse, granddaughter of

Samuel Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After establishing his reputation as a portrait painter, Morse, in his middle age, contributed to the invention of a Electrical telegraph#Morse ...

. During 1992, the light blinked "Capitol 50," in honor of the label's fiftieth anniversary. A black-and-white graphic of the building appeared on the albums of many Capitol recording artists, with the phrase, "From the Sound Capitol of the World". In April 2011, Capitol Records and artist Richard Wyatt Jr. restored his Hollywood Jazz Mural on the south wall of the Capitol Records building. Restored in hand-glazed ceramic tile, the mural spans Entitled "Hollywood Jazz: 1945-1972", it presents "larger than life" images of a number of notable jazz musicians.

Capitol Studios

The building houses the Capitol Studios, a recording facility which includes eight echo chambers engineered by guitarist

Les Paul Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz guitarist, jazz, country guitarist, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid body ...

and three main studios, A, B, and C.

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...

had a close association with the studios, and the

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U 47 microphone he carried around with him is there, often used and maintained for studio sessions. The first album recorded in the tower was '' Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color''. In 2012, Studio A received a new AMS Neve 88R mixing console, designed and built for Al Schmitt and

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John ...

Recent history

In September 2006, EMI sold the tower and adjacent properties for to New York developer Argent Ventures. The studio claimed that noise from construction of a

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

threatened it, as well as an underground parking lot by building firm Second Street Ventures would have heavy equipment working within of its renowned underground echo chambers, which are themselves over below ground level. In November 2012, Steve Barnett was announced as the new Chairman and CEO of the Capitol Music Group and the company stated his office would be in the building. This coincided with Capitol Music Group becoming part of

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, ...

, assuring its new parent company two Los Angeles headquarters.

Gallery

File:Aerial Capitol Records Building.jpg, An aerial view of the Capitol Records Building File:CapitolRecords.jpg, Viewed from Hollywood and Vine, 1997 File:Capitol Records Building LA.jpg, Parking lot mural titled ''Hollywood Jazz'' File:Capitolrecords 032806 kdh.jpg, Taken on 2006-03-28 File:Capitol Records Tower from 101 Freeway, Hollywood, CA (3).jpg, Viewed from the 101 Freeway

In popular culture

* The 2009-2010 series '' Life After People'' has one episode feature the Capitol Records Building crumbling 175 years after humans vanish, although the echo chambers are shown to have survived the collapse. * The 2013 video game ''

Grand Theft Auto V ''Grand Theft Auto V'' is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the seventh main entry in the Grand Theft Auto, ''Grand Theft Auto'' series, following 2008's ''Grand Theft Auto IV'', and ...

'' features the Badger Building, based on the Capitol Records Building. * The 1990 film ''

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane ''The Adventures of Ford Fairlane'' is a 1990 American mystery action comedy film directed by Renny Harlin and written by David Arnott, James Cappe, and Daniel Waters based on a story by Arnott and Cappe. The film stars comedian Andrew Dic ...

'' features the building prominently in the climactic scene.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098987/locations/

References

External links

Capitol Studios official website
{{LAHMC Buildings and structures in Hollywood, Los Angeles Capitol Records Skyscraper office buildings in Los Angeles Headquarters in the United States History of Los Angeles Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Landmarks in Los Angeles Culture of Los Angeles Office buildings completed in 1956 Welton Becket buildings Futurist architecture Modernist architecture in California Round buildings 1956 establishments in California National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles