The landmark Fine Arts Building is located at 811 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Also known as the Global Marine House, it was declared a historic cultural monument in 1974. The building was designed by the architects Albert Raymond Walker (1881-1958) and Percy Augustus Eisen (1885-1946) in 1927. It is a Romanesque Revival, compact twelve-story block on an H-shaped plan with a facing of smooth and squared slabs of light-colored stone. The Façade's first three stories present a striking façade with a trapezoidal profile. The façade rises the entire height of the building, the side of which on the street is divided into three horizontal registers that echo the classic arrangement of a Renaissance palace in distinct lower, central and upper sections. In the Fine Arts Building as in its ancient Italian models, being closest to the eye of the beholder, the bottom section is the part on which the most sumptuous decoration and precise architectural definition is lavished. The two-story interior lobby is set in large wall arches that enclose smaller arches on brackets at the lower level. A large balcony-type gallery is above, with spaces designed for artists studios. It is modeled on the matroneum overlooking the nave of a church. A shallow pool adorned with bronze sculptures, by the sculptor Burt Johnson, reflects light in the center of the lobby. The lobby walls are decorated with ceramic relief panels, small sculptural inserts, and seventeen showcases made of glass and finely chased bronze like reliquaries. They now display a tenants paintings, sculptures and artworks.
http://www.ratkovich.net/development/office/fineartsbuilding 811 W 7th St, Los Angeles, CA 90017