Overview

Situated on the southeast corner of South Rimpau Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, the Farmers Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange and Truck Insurance Exchange Building, designed initially as a three-story office building by Walker and Eisen, was completed in 1937.The building had a parallelogram shape and retained many Art Deco design cues. It was later enlarged by an addition of four more stories in the late 1940s.

Building History

The Farmers Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange and Truck Insurance Exchange Building, a name later shortened to the "Farmers Insurance Group," opened a three-story headquarters at 4680 Wilshire Boulevard in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1937. (In recent years, this portion of Mid-Wilshire has been given the name "Brookside" for the original residential tract of large-scale houses built beginning in the late-1920s, a section bounded by South Highland Avenue on the west, Wilshire Boulevard on the north, South Muirfield Road on the east, and Olympic Boulevard on the south.) By the mid-1930s, the worst effects of the Depression were dissipating and many saavy companies chose to build headquarters during the 1936-1940 period due to the low cost of building materials and labor.

The Los Angeles architectural firm of Walker and Eisen, one of the city's top designers of large-scale commercial buildings, often in the au courant Art Deco mode, received the commission. Farmers remained in this landmark building between 1937 and 2014. Farmers Insurance made a sale and partial lease-back of its building on 10 acres at 4680 Wilshire Boulevard to the Los Angeles-based CIM Group on 04/21/2014. CIM, founded in 1994 by three partners--Shaul Kuba, Avi Shemesh and Richard Ressler--has bought and developed properties in Los Angeles, Oakland, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago and Alexandria, VA.

Building Notes

The Farmers Insurance Building retained a predominantly vertical design orientation inherited from the Art Deco style. Its wrought iron grillework, seen on the corner tower of the building, suggested its Art Deco influences as did the v-shaped profile of the windows on all exterior facades. The later 1949 addition also included an anthemion or palmette located at the top of the tower, a classical ornament not unfamiliar to Art Deco designers. The Los Angeles Conservancy.org has categorized it as "PWA Moderne," a style often developed for governmental buildings during the 1930s. It has inflluences of this style particularly its simple, blocky form and heavy masonry exterior.

Alteration

Claud Beelman and Herman Spackler designed a four-story addition to the original three-story office building in 1949. The Los Angeles Conservancy's website had said of this building: "Known today as Farmers Insurance Group, the company was created in 1927 by John Tyler and Thomas Leavy, who believed that lower-risk drivers shouldn’t have to pay as much for their auto insurance. People from farms and small towns like themselves, they noted, tended to drive more safely. Architects Claud Beelman and Herman Spackler added four floors to the building in 1949. In addition to space for more employees, the enlarged building contained a cafeteria, restaurant, and seventh-floor garden terrace for staff." (See Los Angeles Conservancy.org, "Farmers Insurance Building," accessed 11/20/2025.) Beelman and Spackman were very careful to match the exterior cladding and fenestration patterns of the original Walker and Eisen design.

PCAD id: 25884