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

Hollywood, Los Angeles Hollywood is a neighborhood in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a metonymy, shorthand reference for the Cinema of the United States, U.S. film industry and the people associated with i ...

. Designed by Louis Naidorf of

Welton Becket Associates Welton David Becket (August 8, 1902 – January 16, 1969) was an American modern architect who designed many buildings in Los Angeles, California. Biography Becket was born in Seattle, Washington and graduated from the University of Washingt ...

, it is one of the city's

landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures or f ...

s. Construction began soon after British music company

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

acquired Capitol Records in 1955, and was completed in April 1956. Located just north of the

Hollywood and Vine Hollywood and Vine, the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, a district of Los Angeles, became known in the 1920s for its concentration of radio and movie-related businesses. The Hollywood Walk of Fame is centered ...

intersection, the Capitol Records Tower houses the consolidation of

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

' West Coast operations and is home to the

recording studios A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enoug ...

and

echo chamber Echo chamber of the Dresden University of Technology Hamilton Mausoleum has a long-lasting unplanned echo An echo chamber is a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberation, usually for recording purposes. For example, the producers of a ...

s of

Capitol Studios Capitol Studios are recording studios located at the landmark Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood, California. The studios, which opened in 1956, were initially the primary recording studios for the American record label Capitol Records. While t ...

. The building is a

Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments are sites which have been designated by the Los Angeles, California, Cultural Heritage Commission as worthy of preservation based on architectural, historic and cultural criteria. History The Historic-Cult ...

and sits in the

Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District consists of twelve blocks between the 6200 and 7000 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. This strip of commercial and retail businesses is recognized for its historical significan ...

. 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 numbers of records and amounts of merchandise

Nat King Cole Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued f ...

sold for the company.

Design

The building's design is on the graduate school drawings of Lou 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 A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

on a

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

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 conforms to the zoning height limit in place at the time of its construction. Height restrictions were lifted in 1956. The

thirteenth floor The thirteenth floor is a designation of a level of a multi-level building that is often omitted in countries where the number is considered unlucky. Omitting the 13th floor may take a variety of forms; the most common include denoting what wo ...

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 method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...

. (.... --- .-.. .-.. -.-- .-- --- --- -..) This was an idea of Capitol's then-president,

Alan Livingston Alan Wendell Livingston (born Alan Wendell Levison; October 15, 1917 – March 13, 2009) was an American businessman best known for his tenures at Capitol Records, first as a writer/producer best known for creating Bozo the Clown for a series ...

, 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 having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...

. 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. Richard Wyatt Jr. (born 1955) is a contemporary muralist best known for his public art in and around the city of Los Angeles. His murals can be found at the Watts Towers, the Capitol Records Building, White Memorial Hospital, the Ontario Airport, ...

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, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype ...

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. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...

had a close association with the studios, and the

Georg Neumann Georg Neumann GmbH (Neumann), founded in 1928 and based in Berlin, Germany, is a prominent manufacturer of professional recording microphones. Their best-known products are condenser microphones for broadcast, live and music production purposes ...

U 47 The Neumann is a large-diaphragm condenser microphone. It is one of the most famous studio microphones and was Neumann's first microphone after the Second World War. The original series, manufactured by Georg Neumann GmbH between 1949 and 196 ...

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 ''Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color'' is a 1956 album of short tone poems by eight notable mid-20th century Hollywood composers. The album was conducted by Sinatra and marked the first musical collaboration between Sinatra and Gordon J ...

''. In 2012, Studio A received a new

AMS Neve AMS Neve Ltd is a privately owned audio engineering company who specialise in digital and analogue music consoles, outboard equipment and post production consoles. AMS Neve was the result of the amalgamation in 1992 of AMS (Advanced Music Systems ...

88R mixing console, designed and built for

Al Schmitt Albert Harry Schmitt (April 17, 1930 – April 26, 2021) was an American recording engineer and record producer. He won twenty Grammy Awards for his work with Henry Mancini, Steely Dan, George Benson, Toto, Natalie Cole, Quincy Jones, and other ...

and

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

Recent history

In September 2006, EMI sold the tower and adjacent properties for US$50 million to New York developer

Argent Ventures Argent Ventures, LLC. is a privately held real estate company based in New York City that most notably owned the land under Grand Central Terminal and the land around of Metro-North Railroad railway tracks in the New York City metropolitan area f ...

. The studio claimed that noise from construction of a

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...

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 just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...

, 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

, 1997 File:Capitol Records Building LA.jpg, Parking lot mural titled ''Hollywood Jazz'' File:Capitolrecords 032806 kdh.jpg, Taken on 2006-03-28

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 Office buildings completed in 1956 Welton Becket buildings Futurist architecture Modernist architecture in California Round buildings 1956 establishments in California