AKA: Southern California School of Architecture, Campus #2, Los Angeles, CA; SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, CA

Structure Type: built works - industrial buildings - warehouses

Designers: Albright, Harrison, Architect (firm); Moss, Eric Owen, FAIA (firm); Harrison Albright (architect); Neil Martin Denari (architect); Eric Owen Moss (architect)

Dates: constructed 1906-1907

960 East 3rd Street
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, CA 90013-1822

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East 3rd Street between Santa Fe Avenue and East 4th Street;

Owned by Ken Jackson, Dynamic Builders, 2003;

Albright designed a notably long structure for the Santa Fe Railroad: 1,320 feet long by 91 feet wide. He constructed the warehouse of reinforced concrete that enabled clear spans of sixty feet, thus maximizing storage space; the first depot burned and the railroad demanded a "fireproof" material for this second depot; additionally, in the wake of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 04/18/1906, builders in CA began to stress the use of reinforced concrete for its seismic resilience and fire resistance.

Movie companies used the Santa Fe Freight Depot as a movie set in the 1980s and 1990s; Los Angeles Unified School District sought to build a warehouse on the property in the mid 1990s; the 15-acre, triangle-shaped property bounded by East Third Street, Traction Avenue and Santa Fe Avenue, was sold in 1999 to Dynamic Builders; The building was renovated 1999-2000 to house the avant-garde architecture school, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, (SCI-ARC), which began in 1972; SCI-Arc moved from its Santa Monica quarters to this space in mid-2001; it signed a lease on the property that will elapse in 2011 and paid $88,000 a month in rent; part of the property was slated by SCI-Arc for use as dormitories, although it could not raise the $25 million needed to buy the depot and the other parcels that made up the triangle; developers Richard Meruelo and Daniel D. Villanueva purchased a portion of the property in 2004 for $12.5 million, and planned the construction of two, 40-story apartment towers, each containing 384 luxury apartments, thereby eliminating SCI-Arc's plans for adjacent dormitories; SCI-ARC's tel: 213.613.2200 (2004);

PCAD id: 1702