Another Charles F Plummer building that has experienced adaptive re-use, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Plummer started the SMB Streamline Moderne re-design with Wurdeman & Becket, but passed away before it was finished. Plummer designed this building in 1924 as a grocery store, offices and distribution center for the Youngs Market Company (now the City View Lofts) in Los Angeles. Young’s Market Company was founded in 1888 and is one of the oldest continuously operating companies in the United States. Part of the building contained rooms dedicated to coffee roasting (with a capacity of 10,000 pounds of imported-only coffee), flour blending, flour mixing (holding five carloads of flour), pastry-making, as well as a dough room and a sweet dough room. The market’s bakery had enough gas ovens to bake either 900 loaves of bread hourly or 1,000 loaves every forty-five minutes. There was a floor for the offices, and the second floor was the vast order-filling department – so vast, in fact, the Southern California Telephone company had its largest order up to that time – seventy trunk lines – to accommodate the operators. Finally, 125 carloads of merchandise could fit comfortably into the basement. The SMB Streamline Moderne is most likely Plummers last design - another reason to Save the SMB Streamline Moderne! (Thanks: Big Orange Landmarks!)
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 15:00:00 +0000