Bingo! A fellow blogger, Eric Richarson, over at blogdowntown read my posting on urban exploration and was interested enough to do some research on the history of that particular plot of land. It turns out it's the site of the old State Building built in 1931. He researched and found wonderful historical information from the Los Angeles Times, you can read the specific info here.With that information I went back to the Los Angeles Public Library website and the Photo Collection Database and searched for "State Building." Low and behold I found some wonderful pictures of the groundbreaking, construction, interior murals and final outcome. Here's the entire album for your viewing pleasure.
The architect was John C. Austin who was a major architect in Los Angeles at the time, having worked on numerous high profile projects that the average Joe would know about; City Hall, Griffith Observatory and the Shrine Auditorium, just to name a few.
The murals in the Assembly Hall of the State Building were done by Lucile Lloyd with Benjamin Messick and were WPA projects.
Enjoy! And once again, a big THANK YOU to Eric for unlocking this mystery for me.
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