Ralphs Grocery Store is a historic building in the

Westwood Village Westwood is a commercial and residential neighborhood in the northern central portion of the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Bordering the campus on the south ...

section of

Westwood, Los Angeles, California Westwood is a commercial and residential neighborhood in the northern central portion of the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Bordering the campus on the south ...

. Built in 1929 as a Ralphs Grocery Store, it was one of the original six buildings in the Westwood Village development. The building was noted for its cylindrical rotunda capped by a low saucer dome, with a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

over the entrance and

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

d wings extending north and east. It was photographed by

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...

in 1940, declared a Historic-Cultural Monument in 1988, and listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1992.

Origins of Westwood Village

The history of Westwood Village began in 1925, when the

Regents of the University of California The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of the same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university sy ...

purchased a large block of land from the

Janss Investment Company The Janss Investment Company was a family-run, Los Angeles–based real estate development company that operated from 1895 to 1995. First generation The Janss Investment Company was founded by Peter Janss, an immigrant doctor from Denmark. ...

for the construction of the new

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

campus. The Janss family retained ownership of the land south of the campus and there developed Westwood Village — a carefully planned commercial center that was to be "a model

college town A college town or university town is a community (often a separate town or city, but in some cases a town/city neighborhood or a district) that is dominated by its university population. The university may be large, or there may be several sma ...

." The university and the Janss family agreed to harmonize the architecture of the campus and the village in a " Mediterranean style."

Architecture and opening of Ralphs Grocery Store

The new Westwood Village began to open in 1929, and one of its original buildings was the Ralphs Grocery Store located on

Westwood Boulevard Westwood Boulevard is a street in Los Angeles that runs through the heart of Westwood Village and further south in West Los Angeles. Route Westwood Boulevard begins south of Sunset Boulevard in the campus of UCLA as Westwood Plaza. After exitin ...

, one block north of

Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue in the Financial District of downtown Los Angeles. One of the principal ...

. The store's most prominent feature was its low rotunda, at the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Lindbrook Drive. The building's exterior walls were built with imitation stone, but were later covered with

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

. The building's style has been described as having

Mission Revival The Mission Revival style was part of an architectural movement, beginning in the late 19th century, for the revival and reinterpretation of American colonial styles. Mission Revival drew inspiration from the late 18th and early 19th century ...

Spanish Colonial Revival The Spanish Colonial Revival Style ( es, Arquitectura neocolonial española) is an architectural stylistic movement arising in the early 20th century based on the Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In the ...

Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...

and

Renaissance Revival Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...

elements, and is said to have served as a model for other low-rise commercial structures in the village. Early advertising materials for the Westwood Village development featured images of the Ralphs tower and the Janss dome, which became area landmarks. The opening of the store in the fall of 1929 was timed to coincide with the opening of the UCLA campus, and the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' proclaimed the store "one of the most beautiful exclusive grocery marts in the West." The opening was celebrated with a free food show, as Ralphs boasted a new feature at their Westwood store — "the employment of uniformed boys to wrap each purchase of merchandise while it is being paid for at the cashier's stand, and then carry it to the customer's car." In 1940,

took a series of photographs of Westwood Village, some featuring the Ralphs building. The photographs are part of the collections of the

Los Angeles Public Library The Los Angeles Public Library system (LAPL) is a public library system in Los Angeles, California. The system holds more than six million volumes, and with around 19 million residents in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, it serves the lar ...

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Businesses operating in the building

Ralphs operated a grocery store on the site until the mid-1960s, when it left Westwood Village. Ralphs returned to Westwood Village nearly 40 years later, converting the old

Bullock's Bullock's was a chain of full-line department stores from 1907 through 1995, headquartered in Los Angeles, growing to operate across California, Arizona and Nevada. Bullock's also operated as many as seven more upscale Bullocks Wilshire special ...

department store into a grocery store (formerly sharing the space with a

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

and an Expo Home Design Center). Since Ralphs vacated the building in the mid-1960s, it has housed a number of different businesses. In 1970 a large portion of the space facing Lindbrook Drive was converted into a movie theater, which was known over the years as the United Artists Theater, (where

The Rocky Horror Picture Show ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is a 1975 Musical film, musical comedy horror film by 20th Century Fox, produced by Lou Adler and Michael White (producer), Michael White and directed by Jim Sharman. The screenplay was written by Sharman an ...

made its US debut on September 26, 1975) the UA Egyptian, the Odeon Cinema, and finally as the Mann Festival which closed on July 30, 2009. The Bratskeller restaurant, popular with UCLA students, also operated at the building from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the prime corner space at the base of the tower was split between Daphne's Greek Cafe and

Togo's Togo's Eateries, LLC is an American chain of fast casual sandwich restaurants owned by Southfield Mezzanine Capital who purchased the company in March 2019. Togo's is headquartered in San Jose, California. Togo's is a franchise-based business. ...

Sandwich Restaurant. In late 2008, they were replaced with a

Peet's Coffee & Tea Peet's Coffee is a San Francisco Bay Area-based specialty coffee roaster and retailer owned by JAB Holding Company via JDE Peet's. Founded in 1966 by Alfred Peet in Berkeley, California, Peet's introduced the United States to its darker roast ...

, which remains currently. In early 2012, part of the shuttered movie theater was converted into 800 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria.

Historic preservation and designation

Since the 1970s, the demand for office and residential space around the UCLA campus has resulted in much of the original Mediterranean architecture giving way to large modern high rises, as depicted in the photograph to the right. Preservationists sought to preserve what could be saved of the original Westwood architecture, and in 1988 the Ralphs-Bratskeller-Egyptian Theater building was designated as a Historic Cultural Monument (HCM #360) by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission. Eight other historic buildings in Westwood Village (including the

Fox Bruin Theater The Fox Bruin Theater is a 670-seat movie palace located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, near University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). History The Bruin is located in the heart of the Mediterranean-themed Westw ...

, the Fox Village Theater and the

Janss Investment Company Building The Janss Investment Company Building, also known as the Janss Dome, is a historic building in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, in the Westwood Village. The building is located at the five-way intersection of Westwood Boulevard, Kinross Avenue, ...

) were given monument status at the same time. In 1992, the Ralphs building was also added to the

References

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