There’s something going on along the Hill Street facade of the Grand Central Market. A fabulous installation featuring 13,000 balloons of various sizes and colors is draped over the market’s exterior, visible from Angels Flight and bard to miss from the intersections that flank the Hill Street entrance.
The fantastic, temporary addition commemorates Grand Central Market’s 100th birthday and comes courtesy of Geronimo Balloons’s Jihan Zencirli, whose installations have graced The Broad and storefronts in Echo Park. Additional birthday festivities included an enormous cake that required transport via flatbed truck.
Grand Central Market occupies the bottom levels of two old buildings at the foot of Bunker Hill: The 1897 Homer Laughlin Building, designed by City Hall architect John Parkinson as the first steel-reinforced structure in Los Angeles, and the 1905 Laughlin Annex or Lyon Building, once home to an office for Frank Lloyd Wright.
The market opened in 1917, “and has been in continuous operation ever since,” says the LA Conservancy. In other words, it has definitely earned that big ol’ cake.