Santa Fe Freight Depot

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Santa Fe Freight Depot, 2008

The Santa Fe Freight Depot is a four hundred meter long building in the industrial area east of downtown Los Angeles in what is now known as the Arts District . The Southern California Institute of Architecture had the vacant building converted into a campus in 2000. This helped revitalize what was considered a dirty corner of downtown . The building is 1250  feet long and slightly longer than the Empire State Building is tall. It was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 3, 2006 .

Use as a freight yard

The building, built in 1907, was designed by Harrison Albright , a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete, and served as a freight yard . The Santa Fe Coast Railway secured the property at the Los Angeles River and were about 300,000  US dollars (1907, adjusted for inflation 8,405,137 US dollars) from, to build the huge concrete building. The depot was designed to replace a cargo center that had burned to the ground. Due to its size, the long, narrow reinforced concrete building became a local landmark . The building has 120 bays that have an opening on both sides, which made it possible to unload freight cars on one side and load trucks on the opposite side.

Conversion to the SCI-Arc campus

View from the north

In the 1990s the depot was no longer used. The building was covered all over with graffiti and the interior had been stripped down to the bare concrete, so that inside there was a single empty room about three football fields in length . In 2000, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc for short, signed a lease on the property and intended to relocate its campus here. In the next two years, SCI-Arc had the building renovated and rebuilt, and the industrial wasteland became a 5675 m² university with the latest architecture. The plan for the renovation came from SCI-Arc graduate and faculty member Gary Paige, who described the building as a found object - one with six meter high ceilings and an expansive view of the downtown skyline . One reviewer noted that time has been generous [with the building], giving it a patina interior surface that resembles the character lines of a wise face. The problem was in the typology: at a length as tall as the Empire State Building, the Shotgun Building was incessantly linear, with only one incision breaking the monotony of its quarter mile length . Another reviewer wrote:

“ The recombinant building is a lesson in engineering and architecture. Thirty thousand square feet of studios and seminar rooms, a workshop, homework corners, and a bridge to the library were layered, expansive, and stretched to create an open, permissive, flexible space. It seems that anything can happen within these walls. Whoever enters a studio through its entrance (which has no door) stands in a place that is more like a stage, with a view through a proscenium , which is framed by new steel posts and girders that are parallel and in tandem with the old concrete columns and beam girders stand. "

North side of the building

Before the opening of the SCI-Arc-Campus, the area around the deport was considered a shabby corner of downtown. The completion and presence of SCI-Arc contributed to the revitalization of the district. Associated with this is an increase in the value of the building, which triggered a legal dispute that ended in June 2005 with the decision that SCI-Arc has no right of first refusal on the building and the surrounding property. A contractor bought the unused land west of the site and in 2004 announced plans to build a pair of forty-story skyscrapers, each with 384 luxury apartments.

See also

Web links

Commons : Santa Fe Freight Depot  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Greg Goldin: Open Doors: SCI-Arc rediscovers itself - and the city - downtown , LA Weekly. September 21, 2001. Archived from the original on August 30, 2008 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved July 14, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.laweekly.com 
  2. ^ Mayor Riordan Breaks Ground for Architecture School's New Downtown Campus (English) , Business Wire. March 27, 2001. Archived from the original on July 7, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2009. 
  3. ↑ Entry in the National Register Information System . National Park Service , accessed June 1, 2016
  4. ↑ Big Projects of Santa Fe: Nearly Half a Million for Local Facilities; Plan for Great Freight Yard Greatly Appreciated; San Francisco terminal So to be Expanded (English) , Los Angeles Times. January 11, 1906. 
  5. ↑ a b Bob Pool: Apartment Tower Plans Have Loft District on Edge; An architecture school with designs on the parcel next door is beaten to the punch by developers (English) , Los Angeles Times. February 12, 2004. 
  6. ↑ Jesus Sanchez: Architecture School Plans Move to Edge of Downtown; Education: Westside institute's proposal for old railway building in artists district is major boost for central city revitalization (English) , Los Angeles Times. April 19, 2000. 
  7. ↑ a b Joseph Giovannini: An architect transforms a freight depot for his alma mater and employer in a quarter-mile-long structure (English) , Architectural Record. September 17, 2007. Retrieved July 14, 2009. 
  8. ^ Christopher Reynolds: First the Trains, Now the Arts (English) , Los Angeles Times. July 21, 2002. 
  9. ↑ Jeffrey L. Rabin: Architecture School Loses Bid to Buy Its Home; A judge rules SCI-Arc does not have a binding contract to purchase the former Santa Fe freight depot that it now leases in downtown LA (English) , Los Angeles Times. June 22, 2005. 

Coordinates: 34 ° 2 ′ 42 "  N , 118 ° 13 ′ 58"  W.