Thursday, April 28, 2016

One Good Thing...

There is a lot of construction going on in our Wilshire Center/Koreatown neighborhood to make more room for all those wanting to move into this 'HOT' neighborhood. One good thing about all of this noise & dust is the restoration of an architectural gem at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard & Catalina Street, the Morgan Adams building.

Originally designed by architect Richard D. King and built in 1929, by developer Morgan Adams Sr. (Morgan Adams being a direct descendant of our 2nd & 6th presidents, John Adams and John Qunicy Adams), as an upscale retail store to complement all the other high end retail locations opening up along Wilshire Boulevard at the time. The building is now slated to house a combination of lofts & offices. Details of it's former magnificence are now being slowly drawn out. The building last held a martial arts school and sometime before that it was a piano & organ retail store, with the facade having been whitewashed over at some point, years ago, to make the building look contemporary(?!) 

It is exciting to see this transformation take place and yes, sometimes progress can be beautiful and correct itself. The Gaylord happily welcomes back this gem to the neighborhood!