Larchmont Jewelers building receives Landmark Award
PLAQUE unveiled by WSHPHS President Joseph Guidera and store owner David Lee.
The Albert B. Stephens Building, at 119 N. Larchmont Blvd., was given the Windsor Square Hancock Park Historical Society’s 2024 Landmark Award #128 for adaptive reuse of the original 1923 edifice. David Lee, the owner of both the building and the business it contains, Larchmont Jewelers, and Joseph Guidera, president of WSHPHS, unveiled the plaque on May 1 in front of appreciative WSHPHS members.
WSHPHS MEMBERS in front of award-winning façade
Lee explains how he came to the neighborhood. “I was originally commissioned by Rolex to find a store in Koreatown. I spent a year looking and didn’t find anything.” Frustrated, he scoured a map and saw Larchmont. “I came the next morning and rode down the street.” Realizing that he had found a perfect spot for his fine watch and jewelry store, he soon made an offer on the building.
ROOFTOP LOUNGE at Larchmont Jewelers.
Guidera states, “We are just so happy that somebody who bought the building was open to preserving the façade from the street, but still created a beautiful modern inside. He recognized it would make the neighborhood happy.”
The building was designed by Hugh Barton Saunders in 1923 for owner Albert B. Stephens. Saunders was born in Kentucky and had moved to Los Angeles to become a draftsman. Later, as an architect, he designed the Larchmont Village building, which had a brick façade and featured commercial space on the ground floor and five apartments on top. It also originally housed three garages.
DAVID LEE’S Ferrari helmet and plaque.
“This is a client experience store,” says Lee. “It’s not a typical jewelry store. We treat the client like a guest in my home. I wanted it to look like my living room.”
Clients are invited upstairs, where there is a bar; a sitting room filled with Lee’s guitar collection; a Ferrari room with mementos from Lee’s days as a racecar driver, including his uniforms; and a rooftop lounge with a view of the Hollywood Sign.
Development of the Windsor Square neighborhood began around 1907 as an “exclusive, wealthy subdivision of large houses on large lots,” according to the L.A. Dept. of City Planning. The streetcar rail line, which started in 1915, ran down the middle of Larchmont. Soon after, from 1920 to 1928, the commercial village of Larchmont sprung up, with the vast majority of buildings developed by Julius La Bonte. He had the vision to see that commercial development along the streetcar route to the then popular hot springs spot on Melrose was a prosperous idea. Later, the businesses on Larchmont were also connected to Downtown L.A. by another streetcar called the “R” Line. The stores on the Boulevard also serviced Windsor Heights and the residents of Marlborough Square.
GUITAR ROOM, upstairs at Larchmont Jewelers.
The building was deemed historically significant due to it being “a rare intact example of early commercial development located along a former streetcar line in the Wilshire area,” says the L.A. Dept. of City Planning report. It continues, “The building was constructed while the streetcar was at the height of its popularity…within a dense fabric of attached retail buildings.”
LARCHMONT JEWELERS owner David Lee.
Category: Real Estate
