Help Preserve the Silberberg Building
The Silberberg Building with recent previous tenant, Milk, an ice cream shop. Located at 7274-7290 W. Beverly Boulevard; 180-182 N. Poinsettia Place in Los Angeles’ Beverly/Fairfax neighborhood.
CURRENT STATUS
The Silberberg Building is now Historic Cultural Monument #1276. It was approved by Los Angeles City Council on March 3, 2023. It resides in Council District 5.
February 21, 2023: The Planning and Land Use Management Committee (PLUM) heard the nomination for the Silberberg meeting in the third phase of the Historic Cultural Monument process. ADSLA and Save Beverly Fairfax jointly presented the case. We welcome having our supporters call into the Zoom meeting to let these City Council members know of the cultural importance of the building. This committee is a sub-set of City Council and will determine if the building is worthy enough to turn over to City Council to designate as a Cultural Heritage Monument (HCM) in the City of Los Angeles. CALL IN OR WRITE A LETTER!
November 17, 2022: Following a site visit with the owners, the Cultural Heritage Commission voted to recommend the Silberberg Building for Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Monument status on two of the three criteria for historic buildings (scroll down for details). The building is very well maintained and definitely has many intact character defining features.
September 15, 2022: The Silberberg Building has been submitted to the Cultural Heritage Commission for consideration as an Historic Cultural Monument. The case for building was first heard on Thursday, September 15, 2022 at a virtual (Zoom) meeting at 10:00 AM. At the meeting, the Cultural Heritage Commission voted to take the building under consideration as an HCM. This was followed up by a site visit with two of the commissioners on October 13, 2022.
The nomination is a collaboration between the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles and Save Beverly Fairfax.
The Art Deco Society of Los Angeles goes through a nomination process for buildings that we identify as being “historically significant.” We are now in phase 1 of this process with the Art Deco Silberberg Building in the Beverly Fairfax Building in Los Angeles. We need YOUR PARTICIPATION to achieve a preservation victory. Please read on.
To be effective, we need the public to get behind our nomination, by writing letters of support to key decision-makers and advisors in this process and/or appearing (by Zoom or telephone) to express encouragement to the city to landmark the building.
The Silberberg building was originally designed for the La Brea Mortgage Company. It still maintains much of its original detail such as colorful terrazzo, fully glazed metal double doors with sidelites and a divided‐lite transom with ornamental metal grills. Photos courtesy of Margot Gerber, October 13, 2022.
ABOUT THE SILBERBERG BUILDING
The Silberberg Building is a one-story commercial building located at the southeast corner of W. Beverly Boulevard and N. Poinsettia Place in the Beverly-Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles. Built in 1931, the property was designed in the Art Deco architectural style by architect and engineer J. Robert Harris (1900-1964) for the La Brea Mortgage Company as offices and retail space. The La Brea Mortgage Company, founded in 1928 by realtor and businessman Abraham Silberberg, was one of many businesses established to serve the Jewish community that developed in Beverly-Fairfax and other Wilshire-area neighborhoods. The subject property was among the earliest commercial buildings built in what would become a significant commercial corridor on Beverly Boulevard.
Originally part of Rancho La Brea, the area became home to large-scale oil extraction operations before being subdivided for residential development. By the early 1930s, the area was dominated by a mix of single-family and small multifamily residences and characterized by an emphasis on automobile usage. Beverly Boulevard’s emergence as a commercial corridor followed, and development there, too, was car oriented.
Many of the earliest residents in the Beverly-Fairfax area were Jewish, as it was one of relatively few neighborhoods in Los Angeles where restrictive covenants did not exclude Jewish homeowners; synagogues, delis, kosher restaurants and grocers, and a variety of other businesses and institutions sprang up along Beverly Boulevard to serve the emerging Jewish community. Following World War II, Jewish Angelenos continued to move westward, and Beverly-Fairfax replaced Boyle Heights as the center of Jewish community life in Los Angeles.
Statement of Significance
The Silberberg Building meets the following criteria for designation as a Los Angeles Historic‐Cultural
Monument (HCM):
Criterion A: It is identified with important events of national, state, or local history, or exemplifies significant contributions to the broad cultural, economic or social history of the nation, state, city or community.
Criterion C: It embodies the distinctive characteristics of a style, type, period, or method of construction; or represents a notable work of a master designer, builder, or architect whose individual genius influenced his or her age.
The property at 7290 Beverly Boulevard satisfies Criterion A as a commercial retail building associated with historic patterns of commercial development within the Beverly‐Fairfax neighborhood.
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