Ugly Blue Samsung Sign on Wilshire Now Just Ugly Blue Box

The boxy blue hat that sits atop the 12-story E. Clem Wilson Building at La Brea and Wilshire has been wiped clean of its big white "Samsung", noticeably altering the skyline along Wilshire without improving it too much. The building's long-time manager tells the Beverly Press that Samsung just didn't renew their lease, so while the blue box remains, the white letters have disappeared, leaving only a faint outline of the company's name. "Samsung doesn't lease an office space. They just did the advertising on the building," he says.

The gracelessly perched box atop the 1929 Art Deco building ("the worst sign in Los Angeles") has been there since at least the 1970s, when it read Mutual of Omaha (and later Asahi). A photo of the building from the 1930s, before its top was obscured, shows that it's actually very dramatically capped with Deco ornaments and what the LA Conservancy describes as a "tall dirigible mast"; the building was designed by Meyer & Holler, which also designed the Chinese and Egyptian Theatres.