The Los Angeles City Council's Planning and Land Use Management committee today swiftly passed a motion to establish the Firestone Tire Building at 800 La Brea Ave. in the Miracle Mile as a Historic-Cultural Monument, acting on the recommendation of the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles. The Streamline Moderne Firestone Tire Building is one of the neighborhood's many excellent Deco-era buildings, even if it's smaller in scale than some of the high rises along Wilshire Boulevard (the Firestone Tire Building also reflects Firestone's taste for Streamline Moderne designs, as exemplified by its building at the 1939 New York World Fair). According to the planning documents prepared for today's hearing (pdf), the building was constructed in 1937, but little is known about RE Ward, the structural engineer for the construction of the building. The documents even speculate that the design work was done by an unacknowledged in-house architect at Firestone. The building's most dramatic element is the cantilevered overhang, but it also has a unique continuous elevation, helped by the curved northwest corner of the otherwise square layout. The building's use of porcelain-covered steel was common among commercial buildings of the time. The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which built the building, still owns and operates the building as a garage. The movie also has the distinction of playing "Arnie's"--a garage in the David Lynch noir with a twist, Lost Highway.
· Historic-Cultural Monument Application for the Firestone Tire Building [Council File: 12-0640]
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