Right in front of you stands a large, elegant white building with ten stories, decorated with rows of black fire escape balconies and intricate Beaux Arts detailing, towering above the corner of Broadway and 5th-just follow the line of busy storefronts until you spot the “Fallas Paredes” sign, and look up for those fancy ornaments!
Welcome to the Metropolitan Building! Now, take a deep breath and step back in time to 1913, when this block was the absolute beating heart of Los Angeles shopping and excitement. Imagine streetcars rattling by, newsboys shouting headlines, and women in big feathered hats peering into glass shop windows. Here, on the bustling corner of Broadway and 5th, the Metropolitan Building sprang to life, replacing an old two-story Romanesque Revival building known as the Mueller Building-named for a German-born patriarch, Michael Mueller, whose descendants would keep this corner in the family for almost a century.
As the city boomed, the Muellers decided it was time to build something grand. They teamed up with the Metropolitan Fireproof Building Company-but don’t let that name frighten you; it’s mostly proof that Los Angeles had a thing for dramatic company names! They hired the dynamic duo of architects John Parkinson and Edwin Bergstrom, who were the skyscraper superstars of their era. You might know Parkinson’s work-he gave LA both its first steel-frame building and the city’s first skyscraper. (He clearly liked firsts.)
Now, picture the corner as it was in 1913: construction workers bustling about, scaffolding everywhere, and the sound of hammers echoing off the nearby buildings. What arose here was nothing short of magnificent-a Beaux Arts beauty, ten stories tall, with elegant terra cotta, sculpted ornamentation, and those lovely fire escapes you see zigzagging up the façade today. At street level, the building was designed for commerce. Multiple shops vied for attention-can you smell fresh bread from a cafe or hear the gentle jingle as customers walked through the doors of a department store?
But the real magic happened inside. Stores hugged the ground floor while the upper levels offered open, versatile office spaces and lofty storage rooms. The marble-clad lobby gleamed with a sense of newness and possibility. Over the years, this building played host to some of LA’s most memorable tenants. On the seventh through tenth floors, the Los Angeles Public Library set up shop-a true information palace in the sky. Imagine readers climbing out of the crowded streets and into rooms filled with sunlight streaming through skylights, where books of all kinds were arranged in open shelving and new departments for art, sociology, and industry blossomed.
And then came a parade of retailers. The Owl Drug Company, with its curious little owl signs; Foreman & Clark for men’s suits; Janss Investment Company; and later, the legendary Newberry’s variety store, which turned the ground floor into a single, sprawling shopping destination. If you’d stood here in the 1950s, you might’ve seen terrazzo floors, heard laughter from a bustling food court, or squeezed through a special ramp connecting to the next-door building. They even filmed a “Dragnet” episode here, if you want a bit of TV trivia!
But all wasn’t always easy. As LA’s fortunes shifted and suburban malls took over, downtown faced tough times. By the 1990s, the upper floors of the Metropolitan Building were nearly empty, with only the ground floor kept alive by changing stores.
Then, like a movie with a happy twist, ownership changed hands and the building found purpose again-the upper floors became loft apartments, echoing with new life. The ground level continues to serve as retail, so the rhythms of city commerce-chatter, music, footsteps-never really left the Metropolitan.
Through all these changes, the Metropolitan Building has held fast: a monument to Broadway’s golden era, a testament to LA’s ever-shifting dreams, and a standing invitation to anyone who wants to imagine what came before-if only for a moment as you gaze up at those endless rows of windows and their intricate trim. And hey, next time you’re stuck waiting for the light to change at this intersection, just remember-you’re sharing the sidewalk with over a century of stories.
