The Bradbury Building | One of a Kind Filigree Elevator and Central Atrium

The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark located at 304 South Broadway at West 3rd Street in downtown Los Angeles, California. Built in 1893, the five-story office building is best known for its extraordinary skylit atrium of access walkways, stairs and elevators, and their ornate ironwork.

The building was commissioned by Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury and constructed by draftsman George Wyman from the original design by Sumner Hunt.

Significance: The Bradbury Building, built in 1893, is a fine example of a multi-story structure designed around an inner skylit court. Splendid art nouveau iron work build up the open stairways, open elevator cages and balcony rails. It is a remnant of the Cast Iron Age, which began with the iron bridges in the early half of the 19th century and ended in the last decade of the century when steel framing took over.

The aesthetic quality of the Bradbury Building is largely derived from the superb environment of an inner court flooded with light. It is an early and excellent example of a break with facade architecture and the acknowledgment of the unpleasantness of a busy city street. By treating the inner court as facades, the architect has supplied an off-street leisurely and enriched space which denies the bustle of Broadway and Third Street.

The five-story central court features glazed and unglazed yellow and pink bricks, ornamental cast iron, tiling, Italian marble, Mexican tile, decorative and polished wood, capped by a skylight that allows the court to be flooded with natural rather than artificial light, creating ever-changing shadows and accents during the day. At the time the building was completed, it featured the largest plate-glass windows in Los Angeles.

Open "bird-cage" elevators surrounded by wrought-iron grillwork go up to the fifth floor.

Geometric patterned staircases and wrought-iron and polished oak railings are used abundantly throughout. The wrought-iron was created in France and displayed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair before being installed in the building.