Touring the 1913 Ford Plant Where American Apparel Keeps Its Sexy Mannequin Army

There's a terrific LA secret lurking by the river somewhere near the Warehouse District: American Apparel keeps an enormous army of odd and eclectic and sort of unnervingly sexy mannequins in a 1913 warehouse that was once a Ford plant and later a toy factory. But not for very much longer. As the company prepares to move some operations out of its Alameda Square headquarters and into its fancy new distribution center in La Mirada, it'll leave its lease at what it calls the Toy Factory and move that building's operations (mostly visual merchandising) into Alameda Square. The warehouse on Seventh Street near Santa Fe was built in 1913 as Ford's first California car plant; later it was home to the Imperial Toy company. It's now up for lease. Curbed photographer Elizabeth Daniels takes us on a tour and introduces us to many of the eerie, lifeless tenants--AmApp buys a lot of dead stock, lingerie, and porn shop mannequins, so their collection is truly something else.
· This is American Apparel's Shiny, New, High-Tech Warehouse [Racked LA]
· Imperial Toy Building [Loopnet]