L.A.’s Oviatt Building Sells for $9 Million

The oldest Art Deco building in Los Angeles has been sold for $9 million to a Beverly Hills real estate investment company.

Built by high-end haberdasher James Oviatt in the 1920s, the 12-story Oviatt Building still has some Jazz Age sizzle, with frosted glass designed by Rene Lalique in windows and doors, a three-faced neon clock on the roof and a luxurious penthouse that includes a replica of a Pullman-car stateroom.

Blue Real Estate Management bought the 96,000-square-foot landmark at 617 S. Olive St. from Judah Hertz, a Los Angeles real estate investor who owns other historic properties and the massive California Market Center in the apparel district.

“We’re hoping to kind of bring back some of its faded splendor,” said James Ries, Blue Real Estate’s founder. “A lot of it just has to do with elbow grease.”

Hertz paid $1.5 million for the building in 1996, “and everyone thought I was crazy,” he said Monday.

The owners of beloved historic properties, including the Fine Arts Building and Wiltern Center, have often struggled financially, failing to balance the costs of preserving and upgrading architecturally significant buildings with the rental income obtainable in a competitive real estate market.

But investors are often nonetheless keenly interested in buildings with long histories. Hertz said that downtown in particular, there is “really a correction in the market” going on.

“For a long time, downtown was priced lower than the Westside for no apparent reason other that it was perceived to not be as good,” he said.

The $9 million paid by Blue Real Estate is “fair for an asset of this quality,” said real estate broker Ed Rosenthal of CB Richard Ellis, the firm that represented both parties in the deal. “There is a cachet to ownership of a building like this that goes beyond financial value.”

Blue Real Estate Management will maintain the Oviatt as an office building with a restaurant on the first floor, Ries said. The penthouse will still be a venue for catered events.

The firm has invested in several historic buildings, including the 1929-vintage Security Bank Building on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, the L’Opera Building erected in 1906 on Pine Avenue in Long Beach and the Fine Arts Building, another 1920s landmark in downtown Los Angeles.

“We like to buy interesting buildings in great locations,” Ries said. “We’ve found that there is a base of tenants very loyal to this kind of building. They seem to seek these out in favor of other less interesting buildings.”

Offices in the Oviatt are more than 90% leased, he said. Tenants include architecture firm Melendrez Design Partners and the Rabbinical Council of California, according to CoStar Group, a real estate data provider.

The gilded first floor and mezzanine are occupied by Cicada restaurant, which frequently serves as a plush backdrop for filming movies, television shows and commercials. The space was part of James Oviatt’s haberdashery when the building opened in 1928.

Back then, fine men’s clothing from Europe and other luxury goods were displayed against a background of marble, burled wood and art glass.

Among Oviatt’s clients were motion picture royalty including Cecil B. DeMille, John Barrymore, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable and Hollywood’s best-dressed man, Adolphe Menjou.

The mezzanine was a “feminine paradise” of clothes, goods and gifts of “decorative art for the home,” according to the opening-day announcement.

The exterior of the building was designed by distinguished Los Angeles architects Albert Walker and Percy A. Eisen in the Italian Romanesque style, but the interior design was heavily influenced by Oviatt’s 1925 visit to the Paris Exposition that introduced Art Deco.

Oviatt commissioned a host of French designers and artisans, among them the fabled French jeweler and art glass designer Lalique.

More than 30 tons of custom-designed art glass was shipped to Los Angeles from Paris through the Panama Canal in 1928: lamps, panels, windows, display cases and a vast ceiling.

Much of Lalique’s work can still be seen in the building, including pieces in the penthouse Oviatt called his “castle in the air.”

On one level of the penthouse was a swimming “basin,” a tennis court, gardens and putting green; the second was devoted to his private “beach” complete with imported French sand.

In 1945, Oviatt spotted a 22-year-old saleswoman in his store named Mary Richards. The decisive store owner summoned her to his penthouse and proposed marriage. On her way back down in the elevator, Richards calculated how much merchandise she had on layaway.

The next day she answered his proposal by sending all her purchases -- along with a hefty bill -- to the penthouse.

He later built a playhouse on the rooftop for her daughter and their son, James Oviatt Jr. The couple lived in the penthouse until their deaths in the 1970s.