AKA: Union Terminal, Building #1, Wholesale District, Los Angeles, CA

Structure Type: built works - industrial buildings - warehouses

Designers: Parkinson, John, Architect (firm); John Parkinson (architect)

Dates: constructed 1915-1917

6 stories

East 7th Street and South Central Avenue
Wholesale District, Los Angeles, CA 90021

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On 05/05/1918, the Los Angeles Times published a photo of the recently completed first warehouse of the Union Terminal group; this was the first of three that was to be erected near the Los Angeles Public Market, Its caption wrote of the unadorned structures: "First of mammoth concrete warehouses of Union Terminal group, with second rising beside it. The completed structure, six stories high, 100 feet wide and 650 feet long, and cost $500,000. It is occupied by Bishop & Co, the N.O. Nelson Company and the Terminal Refrigeration Company. The second building, the first floor of which is now being 'poured.' will be of like fimensions and will have for its tenants the Germain Seed and Plant Company, H. Jeune & Co., and the Sunset Terminal Warehouse Company. Excavations for a third structure of the same size, to stand just south of this building, have been completed. The buildings are units of the mighty group projected by the Los Angeles Union Terminal Company on its thirty-acre site on East Seventh street, and which includes the recently completed Los Angeles Public Market at the corner of Seventh and Central. John Parkinson is the architect for the huge layout, while the Wurster Construction Company has the structural ccontract." (See "The New Wholesale and Shipping Center of Los Angeles," Los Angeles Times, 05/05/1918, p. V1.)

In 1916, Bishop and Company, a large, diversified food manufacturer, rented 175,000 square feet in the not-yet-completed Wholesale Terminal; in the 1920s, rapid growth spurred it to lease 7 stories of the building.

PCAD id: 15316