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 the city of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Bordering the campus on th ...

section of

Westwood, Los Angeles, California Westwood is a commercial and residential neighborhood in the northern central portion of the Westside (Los Angeles County), Westside region of the city of Los Angeles, California. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCL ...

. 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 A rotunda () is any roofed building with a circular ground plan, and sometimes covered by a dome. It may also refer to a round room within a building (an example being the one below the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.). ...

capped by a low saucer dome, with a

pediment Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In an ...

over the entrance and

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated video, pinball, electro-mechanical, redemption, etc., game ** Arcade video game, a coin-operated video game ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade video game's hardware ** Arcad ...

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 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 ...

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 sys ...

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. Pet ...

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, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

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 town or city whose character is dominated by a college or university and their associated culture, often characterised by the student population making up 20 percent of the population of the community, bu ...

." 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 exi ...

, one block north of

Wilshire Boulevard Wilshire Boulevard ( wɪɫ.ʃɚ is a prominent boulevard in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, extending from Ocean Avenue (Santa Monica), Ocean Avenue in the city of Santa Monica, California, Santa Monica east to Grand Avenue (Lo ...

. 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 ...

. 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 architecture (), often known simply as Spanish Revival, is a term used to encompass a number of revivalist architectural styles based in both Spanish colonial architecture and Spanish architecture in general. Thes ...

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 t ...

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 of ...

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'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' 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 (LAPL) is a public library system in Los Angeles, California, operating separate from the Los Angeles County Public Library system. The system holds more than six million volumes, and with around 19 million resid ...

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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 specialt ...

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 r ...

and an

Expo Home Design Center An expo is a trade exposition. It may also refer to: Events and venues * World's fair, a large international public exposition * Singapore Expo, convention and exposition venue ** Expo Axis, one of the world's largest membrane roofs, constructe ...

). 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 independent musical comedy horror film produced by Lou Adler and Michael White, directed by Jim Sharman, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The screenplay was written by Sharman and Richard O ...

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 Daphne's Greek Cafe or, Daphne's California Greek, is an American fast-casual Greek restaurant operating in California. The restaurant name refers to Daphne of Greek mythology whom the god Apollo desired. Daphne's was rated #11 in ''2006 Top 1 ...

and Togo's 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 Dutch multinational coffee and tea company JDE Peet's. Founded in 1966 by Alfred Peet in Berkeley, California, Peet's introduced the United States to ...

, which shuttered in 2020 and was replaced by Alfred Coffee in 2021. In early 2012, part of the shuttered movie theater was converted into 800 Degrees Neapolitan Pizzeria, which was then replaced by Danny Boy's Famous Original pizzeria in 2024.

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 Bruin Theater, also known as the Regency Bruin Theater or 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 On Decembe ...

, the

Fox Village Theater The Regency Village Theatre (formerly the Fox Theatre, Westwood Village or the Fox Village Theatre, commonly called the Westwood Village Theatre) is a historic, landmark cinema in Westwood, Los Angeles, California in the heart of the Mediterra ...

and the Janss Investment Company Building) were given monument status at the same time. In 1992, the Ralphs building was also added to the

References

External links