Standing at the corner of Broadway and Third Street in downtown Los Angeles, the Bradbury Building is the oldest commercial building in the area when it was completed. Built in 1893, this five-story office building looks modest from the outside. Step through the entrance, and the interior tells a completely different story — one of soaring light, ornate ironwork, and open balconies that feel unlike anything else built in that era.
The building’s most striking feature is its skylit atrium. Natural light pours in from a large glass roof overhead, flooding the interior court with brightness throughout the day. This was a deliberate design choice — a direct response to the noise and congestion of the busy streets outside. Rather than treating the street-facing exterior as the showpiece, the architect turned the interior into the focal point, creating a calm, richly detailed space tucked away from Broadway’s hustle.
The man who commissioned the building was Lewis L. Bradbury, a gold-mining millionaire who had made his fortune through ventures including the Tajo mine in Sinaloa, Mexico. In the later years of his life, Bradbury shifted his focus to real estate development in Los Angeles. By 1892, he had set his sights on constructing a landmark five-story office building near the Bunker Hill neighborhood.
Bradbury first hired local architect Sumner Hunt to design the building. Hunt submitted his plans, but Bradbury rejected them as inadequate. He then turned to George Wyman, one of Hunt’s own draftsmen, to take on the project. Wyman had no formal architectural education and was earning just $5 per week working under Hunt. Despite his limited credentials, Bradbury believed Wyman grasped his vision for the building more fully. Whether Wyman substantially changed Hunt’s original design or largely built upon it remains a point of debate, with no definitive evidence settling the question.
Lewis Bradbury did not live to see his building completed. He died in 1892, roughly six months before the building opened in 1893. Construction wrapped up in 1894 at a final cost of $500,000 — the equivalent of about $16 million today. That figure was nearly three times the original budget of $175,000, a significant overrun that reflected the level of craftsmanship and detail that went into every corner of the structure.
The ironwork throughout the building is exceptional. The stairways, elevator cages, and balcony railings all feature intricate art nouveau designs — a style defined by flowing, organic shapes and fine decorative detail. Iron as a building material had been gaining momentum since the early 1800s, when iron bridges first began to appear. By the second half of the century, steel-framed buildings were rising across American cities. The Bradbury Building sits within that tradition, using iron not just structurally but as a central artistic element.
The open elevator cages are among the most photographed details inside the building. Each one is wrapped in decorative ironwork, and they move openly within the atrium, fully visible from every floor. The balconies on each level are lined with matching railings that run the full perimeter of the interior court, giving every floor a direct view of the skylit space below and above.
The atrium itself functions almost like an outdoor courtyard brought inside. The glass ceiling allows sunlight to reach the ground floor, keeping the space bright and open even deep within the building’s footprint. This approach — treating the interior court as the architectural centerpiece rather than the street-facing facade — was uncommon for the time and made the Bradbury Building stand apart from its contemporaries.
The building’s dramatic interior has made it one of the most filmed locations in Los Angeles. It has appeared in numerous movies, television productions, and music videos over the decades. The combination of the skylit atrium, layered balconies, and ornate ironwork creates a visually dense environment that lends itself naturally to the screen.
From the ground floor looking up, the building’s scale becomes clear. Five stories of open balconies rise above the atrium floor, each level connected by staircases and serviced by those distinctive open elevator cages. The materials, the proportions, and the light all work together to make the interior feel far grander than the building’s street-level exterior suggests.
