Eastern Columbia Building

Eastern Columbia Building is a winner for the 2025 Preservation Design Award for Preservation or Restoration. Award recipients are selected by a jury of top professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, planning, and history, as well as renowned architecture critics and journalists. Tickets and sponsorship options are available at californiapreservation.org/programs/awards/.

About Eastern Columbia Building

The Eastern Columbia Building, also known as the Eastern Columbia Lofts, is a thirteen-story Art Deco building located at 849 South Broadway in the Broadway Theater District of Downtown Los Angeles. The building had experienced much damage and deterioration to its terra cotta cladding since its construction in 1930 and adaptive reuse in 2006. Over the period of 2017 through 2024, the project team performed a series of investigations including field evaluation (using hands-on techniques that included industrial rope access), material testing, building instrumentation, and laboratory testing to evaluate the various distress mechanisms of the terra cotta cladding. Laboratory testing, specifically accelerated weathering testing, was performed on a series of potential coating systems to evaluate the long-term performance of various types of intervention. After multiple years of investigations, testing, and construction observation during repairs, the restoration of Eastern Columbia’s terra cotta facade was completed in 2024.

Community Importance

The Eastern Columbia Building is widely considered the greatest surviving example of Art Deco architecture in Los Angeles. As highlighted by the Los Angeles Conservancy, “its vertical emphasis is accentuated by deeply recessed bands of paired windows and spandrels with copper panels separated by vertical columns. The facade is decorated with a wealth of motifs, including sunburst patterns, geometric shapes, zigzags, chevrons, and stylized animal and plant forms.”

In 1979, the National Park Service listed the Eastern Columbia Building as a contributing building to the Broadway Theater and Commercial Historic District. In 1985, it was designated as a Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monument.

The Eastern Columbia Lofts stands today as a testament to the tremendous positive impact that adaptive reuse has on the surrounding community. In addition, the Mills Act program provides the framework to allow individual stakeholders agency in the preservation commitment to their home and, by extension, their neighborhood. And, in the case of the Eastern Columbia Lofts, the overall construction budget mirrored the tax benefit provided by the program. These investments have preserved and revitalized a building that serves so many purposes: a dazzling focal point for the historic Broadway Theater District, an anchor on Broadway that promotes ongoing development, and a beloved beacon for Angelenos who live and work in downtown Los Angeles.

About CPF and the Awards

The California Preservation Awards are a statewide hallmark, showcasing the best in historic preservation. The awards ceremony includes the presentation of the Preservation Design Awards and the President’s Awards, bringing together hundreds of people each year to share and celebrate excellence in preservation.

The California Preservation Foundation (CPF), a 501c3 nonprofit, was incorporated in 1978. We now support a national network of more than 36,000 members and supporters. Click here to learn how you can become a member.