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 region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Picture ...

. 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 landmarks. 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) 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 not ...

' 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 enou ...

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 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 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 on a turntable 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 ...

. (.... --- .-.. .-.. -.-- .-- --- --- -..) 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. 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 and three main studios, A, B, and C. Frank Sinatra had a close association with the studios, and the Georg Neumann

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''. 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 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. 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 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

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