L.A. Candy Store Faces Demolition
By Angela Serratore | Online Only | Mar. 5, 2009
See's Candy Store, Los Angeles
Credit: Charlene Nixon
A love of a candy company's iconic white dresses and the promise of all-you-could-eat sweets once inspired Charlene Nichols of Altadena, Calif., to take a summer job at an outpost of Los Angeles-based See's Candy. Now Nichols is spearheading the battle to save the original See's shop and factory from the wrecking ball.
Located in what is now Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood, the See's building, a 1921 Italian Renaissance revival, is in danger of being converted into a strip mall. The store's most recent tenants, a bait-and-tackle shop, vacated the premises last year.
While the store was included in a citywide survey of historic resources, the survey had not yet been submitted for city approval. Meanwhile, a local builder had already pulled permits to significantly alter the space in a way that would, according to Nichols, "obliterate the remaining second story detail with a new façade treatment and would reorient the entrances to the parking lot."
Nichols, a member of the Los Angeles Conservancy's Modern Committee, knew that she would have to act fast, and so she and her husband, Chris, began doing the research and reporting necessary to put together an application to designate the See's building a Historic Cultural Monument—an application which she hand-delivered to the commission in an empty five-pound See's box, along with samples of some of the company's most famous creations (which, it should be noted, the commission declined to sample on ethical grounds).
On Feb. 5, members of the Cultural Heritage Commission agreed to consider the building for historic landmark designation. The next step is an official tour of the property, during which commissioners will be looking for "sufficient representations of historic and cultural significance," says Ken Bernstein, a manager at the City of Los Angeles' Office of Historic Resources. A second meeting in early April will determine the building's final fate, and statistically, the odds are in the See's building favor—of some 50-60 applications filed each year, approximately 40 are approved.
"The See's building is a cultural icon and the birthplace of something Americans have identified with and loved for decades," says Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy. "See's developed its distinctive black-and-white corporate design here, and it remains a part of our landscape today."
Nichols, for one, is convinced the building is worth saving: "Of the hundreds of candy shops listed in the 1921 Los Angeles phone book, See's is the only one that still is operating," she says. "When you look at a streetscape of Western from 1924, the outline of the See's is one of the only thing that connects the past with the present."
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Comments
Submitted by Jerry at: March 18, 2009
Anonymous, It's not your place to pass judgement on the aesthetics of this building much less if the product sold here might not be good for one's health. It is about the cultural importance that the structure embodies. As a historic preservationist you should know that.
Submitted by Anonymous at: March 11, 2009
It looks ugly
Submitted by Anonymous at: March 11, 2009
candy rots your teeth