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The English-born, Los Angeles architect John C.W. Austin (1870-1963) designed the NBC West Coast Radio City Studios in the mid-1930s. Since 1927, NBC had located its main broadcasting studios in San Francisco, but, due to the rapid expansion of the movie industry down south, the network chose to switch its hub to the corner of Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in 1938. NBC was not alone in operating its main West Coast radio operations in Hollywood; by 1950, CBS, ABC and the Mutual Don Lee Broadcasting System had also built facilities here.

Although most of American erected little commercial architecture during the Depression, Los Angeles, buoyed by money from its entertainment industry, continued building, albeit at a diminished pace from the frenetic 1920s. West Coast Radio City was a prime example of the Streamline Moderne Style so prevalent in Los Angeles; Stiles O. Clements (1883-1966), particularly, was a master of the mode in the city, as demonstrated at the Owl Drug Store/Julian Medical Building, Hollywood Boulevard (1934) and the Thomas Jefferson High School, Vernon, (1936), but others produced many Streamline landmarks such as Plummer, Wurdeman and Becket's Pan-Pacific Auditorium (1934), Robert Derrah's Coca-Cola Building (1937), and William E. Meyer's Lane-Wells Building, Vernon, (later the Winnie and Sutch Company, 1939).

Demolished; this large complex at the corner of Sunset and Vine was torn down in 1964. A bank replaced the studios soon thereafter.

PCAD id: 4032