Description

Built in 1893, the Bradbury Building is one of the city’s most remarkable architectural places. It was inspired by an 1880’s science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, called Looking Backward. The building was commissioned by an ailing mining magnate named Lewis Bradbury, who wanted to construct a commercial building a few blocks from his fashionable Bunker Hill home. Bradbury originally wanted the noted Los Angeles architect Sumner Hunt to design the building. When Bradbury became dissatisfied with Hunt’s plans, he turned to one of Hunt’s draftsmen, George Wyman, for a more interesting design.

While the building has a fairly typical exterior for that time, it dazzles with its central court, open-cage elevators, and offices opening to the inner balconies, all flooded by space-filling sunlight falling from the glass roof overhead.