Milliron's Westchester
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Milliron's Westchester, later The Broadway-Westchester, was a
department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...
at 8739 S. Sepulveda Blvd., in
Westchester, Los Angeles Westchester is a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles and the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is home to Los Angeles International Airport, Loyola Marymount University, Otis College of Art and Design ...
, designed by architect Victor Gruen. Its original design was considered a landmark in exterior architecture of retail stores, although much of the original design is no longer present. The building now houses a
Kohl's Kohl's Corporation (Kohl's is stylized in all caps) is an American department store retail chain store, chain. currently has 1,165 locations, operating stores in every U.S. state except Hawaii. The company was founded by Polish immigrant Maxwe ...
.


Background

Originally, in 1942, Frank Ayres & Son, developers were commissioned to create a healthy business district along Sepulveda in the new Westchester community. They tried to lure J. C. Penney as an anchor, but Penney's felt the area was too close to Downtown Inglewood. They succeeded in attracting Milliron's, the first branch of Milliron's department store (long known as the Fifth Street Store), which had its flagship store on Broadway in
Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of the city of Los Angeles. It is part of the Central Los Angeles region and covers a area. As of 2020, it contains over 500,000 jobs and has a population of roughly 85,000 residents ...
, then still the city's main retail district lined with large department stores and cinemas. However Milliron's did not have the drawing power of a
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 specialt ...
, Broadway or J. W. Robinson's.


Significance

Victor Gruen, an Austrian-born architect, who would later design the country's first enclosed mall, Southdale Center, and greatly influence the design of the American shopping mall, emigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and made a name for himself designing retail stores in New York City, such as
Ciro's Ciro's (later known as Ciro's Le Disc) was a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California owned by William Wilkerson. Opened in 1940, Ciro's became a popular nightspot for celebrities. The nightclub closed in 1960 and was reopen ...
on Fifth Avenue and Barton's Bonbonniere on Broadway. In 1941 he began extensive work in Los Angeles designing branches of Grayson’s Ladies Ready to Wear on
Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollyw ...
,
Crenshaw Boulevard Crenshaw Boulevard is a north–south thoroughfare that runs through Crenshaw and other neighborhoods along a route in the west-central part of Los Angeles, California, United States. The street extends between Wilshire Boulevard in Mid-W ...
and Third Street. In 1949 he designed Milliron's Westchester, Westchester was a fast-growing suburban district on the city's Westside. The grand opening on March 17, 1949 was a "huge event that showcased the elegance and efficiency of postwar
Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
", according to the
Los Angeles Conservancy The Los Angeles Conservancy is a historic preservation organization in Los Angeles, California that works to document, rescue and revitalize historic buildings, places and neighborhoods in the city. The Los Angeles Conservancy is the largest m ...
. Millron's Westchester was considered strikingly innovative when it opened in 1949, in terms of both it attractive Late Moderne design and in being a suburban (but freestanding) department store, which was still relatively new. In the following years, department stores did expand to the Los Angeles suburbs. But only a few years after opening, by the mid-1950s it would be regarded as behind the times: * the scale as small and relatively ordinary, compared to the larger, complete shopping malls then starting to open, such as Broadway-Crenshaw Center in 1947 * facing the street and attempting to be visually appealing to automobile traffic, when new shopping centers were creating insular environments * freestanding department stores were already seen as the exception rather than the rule – ''Architectural Forum'' declared in 1950 that the "isolated branch store in the suburbs is headed for serious trouble". Nonetheless, Milliron's was an important reference for Gruen's future career. Because it was a department store and not just a smaller specialty store, his work was exposed at a national level, and Gruen would go on to become the most renowned architect of the American enclosed mall.


Architectural details

Although the building is not listed, 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 ...
registration form for Bullock's Pasadena references it and describes it as Late Moderne style, "a one-story department store, it also integrated parking lots into the plan, and added roof-top parking accessible via two criss-crossed ramps at the rear of the building. Faced with unpainted brick, its facade displays regular bays marked by structural fins creating a flat-canopied loggia above the roofline. This system circumscribes the building, sweeping down to form a modernistic arch over the rear entries to the rooftop parking ramps. Though it was windowless, Milliron's provided four freestanding display kiosks for window displays along the sidewalk side."


Height

Milliron's design aimed to house "five stories' worth of department store within one story", despite the store being only in size. The restaurant, beauty parlor and auditorium were located on the roof and elevated the main façade to a height of 30 feet. An elevation wrapped around the secondary façade and screened a rooftop parking deck and stair towers from view at ground level and vertical concrete fins accentuated the apparent height, which from all main angles appeared to be that of a two-story building.


Parking

An unusual feature was a rooftop parking lot for 300 cars. Dramatic ramps that were designed with straight lines but with some slightly diagonal lines, and with curves at the angles, led cars up to the roof. Escalators led down into the store from the roof.


Epilogue

The shopping district around Milliron's area remained sparse for the first few years. The store was sold in June 1950 to The Broadway was then known as The Broadway-Westchester. Westchester never did take off as a regional shopping nexus, especially after the construction of the nearby Fox Hills Mall. Broadway closed its Westchester branch in late 1990. The building later housed a branch of Mervyns and is currently a branch of
Kohl's Kohl's Corporation (Kohl's is stylized in all caps) is an American department store retail chain store, chain. currently has 1,165 locations, operating stores in every U.S. state except Hawaii. The company was founded by Polish immigrant Maxwe ...
.


External links


M. Jeffrey Hardwick, ''Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream'', ch. "Seducing the Urban Autoist", pp. 93ff.
h1>

References

{{History of Retail in Southern California Defunct department stores based in the City of Los Angeles Victor Gruen buildings Westchester, Los Angeles Moderne architecture in California Defunct department stores based in the Westside, Los Angeles