Through the Viewfinder With a Photo of the Broadway Arcade Building Los Angeles, 1924, Part One

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

This newest “Through the Viewfinder” post, featuring historic greater Los Angeles photographs from the Homestead’s collection, is of a real photo postcard of the Broadway Arcade Building, usually shortened to the Spring Arcade Building or Arcade Building, of Los Angeles that was postmarked on 5 June 1928, but the image was taken about 4 1/2 years earlier.

The structure, built by the realty firm operated by Alfred Cleveland Blumenthal (1887-1957), who rose rapidly in the real estate world in Los Angeles as it underwent one of its many massive building booms during the early 1920s, with one of his most important projects being the Arcade, a structure that received considerable attention upon its completion in February 1924.

Seeing that there was still construction work on the building in the photo, but that it was laden with flags an a sign for the grand opening, it seems likely that the image was taken not long prior to the unveiling. The massive edifice, comprising a pair of 12-story (height limit) office towers atop a three-story “arcade” of commercial shops along with a basement cafeteria, still stands just north of 6th Street and running between Spring Street and Broadway.

The site was formerly the second location of the Angel City’s first public school, the Spring Street School, which opened in the 1850s at Spring and 2nd and then moved about thirty years later to the deep lot with entrances on both ends. The expanded campus included an auditorium used by the public and also provided facilities for what lately has been called “special education” but was then known as serving the “deaf and dumb” student population.

With the continuing growth of the Angel City, including a boom in the first years of the 20th century, the Spring Street School land was considered too valuable to continue for educational purposes, so the city schools board decided to lease the land and raze the brick edifice, though the building material was to be salvaged. What emerged in 1904 was Mercantile Place, with a wide avenue from Spring to Broadway and commercial structures and stores lining the short thoroughfare, and a ten-year lease executed.

While a lease was extended in 1914, the continuing rise in value of the property led the school board to sell it five years later, with accounts stating it was to Adolph Ramish of the Hippodrome Theatre Company, who built the Belasco Theatre and a couple of his own venues, each called the “Adolphus.” While he had plans to erect a theater on the site, this did not materialize, so a deal was reached in November 1922 to sell the property to Blumenthal’s real estate company which had only recently established a presence in Los Angeles.

Blumenthal was born in San Rafael, across the bay from San Francisco, in December 1885 to German Jews Morris Blumenthal and Barbara Herzog. Morris was a producer merchant and butcher and the family also comprised four daughters, with Alfred being the oldest of the children. By 1910, the University of California graduate was employed with the Southern Pacific Railroad, starting as a clerk and then working for the land department, where he developed his realty skills.

When he registered for the draft in November 1918 at the end of World War I, Blumenthal was residing in San Francisco and was a manager for two firms, the realty company, A.J. Rich and Company and Liberty Food Products Company. Notably, a year later when it was announced that Ramish acquired the Mercantile Place property, wire service reports stated that “A.C. Blumenthal & Company of San Francisco, are the owners today [14 November 1919] of the Mercantile place property . . . where on a $1,000,000 motion picture house with a 4,00[0] seating capacity theatre will be built” along with “an eight-story building and loft.”

Whatever involvement he may have had in the Ramish deal, Blumenthal soon entered on his own significant theatre and office structure endeavor when he worked with impresario Marcus Loew on the acquisition at the dawn of 1920 of a 99-year lease for $12.5 million for the southwest corner of Broadway and 7th Street, owned by the owner of The Broadway department store, Arthur Letts (who, in November 1921, sold the southeast corner of Hill and 7th to San Francisco capitalists represented by Blumenthal).

What emerged upon completion in November 1921 was the Loew’s State Theatre Building and the entertainment venue that was the anchor tenant. Having previously maintained his offices in San Francisco, Blumenthal opened a branch on the sixth floor of the Loew’s edifice, with the Los Angeles Express of 14 September reporting,

Mr. Blumenthal states that his firm has decided to come to Los Angeles not so much as realty agents, but to engage in realty operations involving improvement of vacant property on a large scale.

He was certainly thinking “on a large scale,” though not with vacant property, when he acquired the Mercantile Place holding from Ramish and embarked on the Broadway Arcade Building. The Express of 10 November 1922 commemorated Blumenthal’s first year of operations in the Angel City by highlighting the $2.5 million deal, which comprised 10% of his overall sales of $25 million.

The paper continued that “in all this [there] has been no handling of property for merely speculative purposes” as “every deal has resulted or is resulting in construction of great improvements.” It was expected that “a great arcade building” planned would involve an expenditure equal to the purchase price of the land and “will be the large building of the kind west of Cleveland.”

Frontage on Spring and Broadway was 120 feet and the depth between them was 326 feet, while through the center of the three-story arcade was to be “a 28-foot tile walk” lined with some 30 “specialty shops.” Some of these were to be on a second level “fronting on elevated walks, with bridges spanning to the two sides.” It was further explained that, in 1919, Blumenthal “induced Adolph Ramish to purchase Mercantile place” and now “buys back the property, at a net profit to Mr. Ramish of more than $1,000,000.”

In addition to the aforementioned big deals, Blumenthal executed eight others, half involving large transactions, including a 99-year lease of the Cunningham holdings on the west side of Hill between 7th and 8th streets for $5 million and the acquisition of the building for $400,000; the purchase of the Consolidated Realty Building at Hill and 6th for $2 million; a $1.5 million acquisition of the Winter Garden property on the east side of Spring between 5th and 6th, and a 12-story apartment building at the southeast corner of Wilshire and Berendo that ended up being owned by film titan Joseph Schenck and his wife, the actor Norma Talmadge, for whom the structure was named.

The Express rhetorically queried, “what manner of man is this, a comparative stranger, who puts over deals of such magnitude, in such numbers, in so short a space of time?” It answered that, if one were to ask “the boyish-looking small man behind the counter” of the Blumenthal office for the head of the firm, they would be told, with a slight smile and twinkle of the eyes, that he was very busy and the inquisitor would be surprised to find that the gent thought to be “an exceptionally bright office boy” was none other than the company’s leader.

Once visitors got over the shock of not finding an imposing bear of a man at the reins of such an important enterprise, “they have found in Mr. Blumenthal a genius for appreciation of values and for the handling of large intricate real estate deals.” Asked how he achieved so much in so little time, he modestly replied, “why, I guess it is just a matter of faith . . . in my own judgment, always willing to back it with my own money, and maybe that inspires confidence in others.”

Blumenthal went on to suggest the arranging financing was the easiest element and then he offered that “men on the outside have a better appreciation than many that live right here of the possibilities and the certain future of Los Angeles” while adding that “progress is imagination and courage.” He allowed that “I don’t worry, and I sure get a kick out of work” and that “I’d be miserable loafing.”

He insisted he wasn’t in the realty game for the money, “but the pride in achievement that gives zest to effort.” He opined that Los Angeles was well beyond its stage as a tourist attraction and noted that “cheap water and cheap electric power, and the splendid condition of [non-union?] labor were the first conditions to make men to see Los Angeles is more than a place to come to for a vacation.” Blumenthal went on that

One would be foolhardy who attempted to fix any limit to this city. Nobody knows its possibilities. They seem boundless. It is wonderful to have a part in the making of this great thing.

A short time later, in its 15 January 1923 edition, the Times ran a feature penned by Blumenthal as expanded on his sentiment of the seemingly limitless potential of the Angel City. This came at the start of a year that was the apex of the latest boom and when, Walter P. Temple, albeit on a smaller scale, was investing in Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley real estate on what was almost certainly a similar attitude.

Blumenthal began by commenting “when I started operations in Los Angeles just a year ago, it was quite apparent to me that Los Angeles was on the eve of a great development.” Yet, he addressed a criticism, though from whom was not stated, that rents for commercial properties were “beyond the reach of a careful merchant,” though the developer placed the issue on the fundamental matter of supply and demand and asserted that the Angel City was no different in this than other major American cities.

Citing the Wilshire Boulevard apartment building, the Jewelers Exchange Building and the Arcade Building as examples of his contributing to the growth of the city’s commercial core, Blumenthal enthused, “Los Angeles will see the greatest building era of its history in the downtown district” and dismissed the idea of overbuilding because of the burgeoning population of the city.

He saw great potential in the area around Pershing Square and on north and south thoroughfares from Spring and its financial sector to Figueroa and along the numbered streets from 4th to 9th. He pinpointed Seventh Street west of Figueroa and the latter street south beyond the aforementioned numbered streets as other areas of growth. After briefly noting the need for improving automobile and pedestrian traffic conditions, Blumenthal concluded,

I am convinced that Los Angeles has not reached its zenith, but is on the eve of a much greater development. The eyes of the world are focused on this coast anyway, and Los Angeles has reached a point in its growth where no temporary set-back can affect it. It is true that it may run into periods of dullness, but these cannot affect its tremendous possibilities . . . Los Angeles is destined to be, in a very short while, the third largest city [after New York City and Chicago] in the United States.

We will return with part two soon and carry the story forward to the completion of the Broadway Arcade Building and the extensive media coverage that entailed.