National Register visit 211: Washington Building 📍9720 Washington Boulevard, Culver City
New York ain’t the only city with flatiron buildings! In fact, Culver City’s got two of them, right across the intersection of Washington & Culver from each other: the Culver Hotel and the Washington Building.
The wedge-shaped Washington Building, completed in 1928, is one of the few remaining structures from downtown Culver City's heyday in the 1920s. It was commissioned by Charles Lindblade, a real estate developer who, as the VP of the H.H. Culver Real Estate & Development Company, basically built much of Culver City in the 1910s through the early 1930s. After splitting from his old buddy Harry Culver in the late ‘20s, Lindblade had a company under his own name in the Washington Building for a few years, until the Great Depression forced him to liquidate his interest in it.
Over the years all sorts of businesses have operated out of here, from the Culver City Post Office to the MGM Fan Club to an employment agency. Nowadays it’s home to a Starbucks, a gift shop, an architectural firm and (coming next week, apparently?) a really effing good-looking handmade pasta/pizza place called Nardò.
There’s a lot to this story that I didn’t get to cover in the video, so fill in the gaps at Etandoesla.com: etandoesla.com...
Photo credits, in order:
📷 1: Gil Cooper: Street scene at intersection of Washington & Culver Boulevards, 1963. Washington Building at top center. (Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection, UCLA Department of Special Collections)
📷 2: 1922 passport photo of Julia & Charles Lindblade (public domain, via LA Street Names)
📷 3: Population growth in Culver City (Eyre Powell Chamber of Commerce Collection / Los Angeles Public Library)
📷 4: Washington Street, Culver City, ca. 1930 (Washington Street, Culver City (Los Angeles Public Library Legacy Collection)
📷 5: Panorama of Culver City, 1926 (Security Pacific National Bank Collection / Los Angeles Public Library)
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