United States Post Office Hollywood Station (1937), Los Angeles
Designed by Art Deco architect Claud Beelman under the Works Progress Administration and opened in 1937, the Hollywood Station post office on North Wilcox Avenue is one of the few historic government buildings in Hollywood to survive largely unchanged — its NRHP-listed Art Deco facade and WPA lobby bas-relief intact in a neighborhood transformed beyond recognition since their installation.
At a glance
The United States Post Office — Hollywood Station stands at 1615 North Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood, Los Angeles, between Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard. Designed by Claud Beelman — one of the foremost Art Deco architects in Los Angeles — working with the associated firm Allison & Allison for the Works Progress Administration, the building was completed in 1937. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, it preserves a WPA bas-relief in the lobby lobby — “The Horseman” by Gordon Newell, still mounted above a doorway — and remains in active use as a post office and Federal landmark.
Key facts
- Built: 1937
- Style: Art Deco
- Architect: Claud Beelman; Allison & Allison (associated)
- Patron: Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- WPA art: Wooden bas-relief The Horseman by Gordon Newell (Treasury Relief Art Project), still in place above a lobby doorway
- Groundbreaking: Will H. Hays of the Motion Picture Production Code
- NRHP listed: January 11, 1985 (#85000130)
- Current use: Active United States Post Office
- Address: 1615 N. Wilcox Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
- GPS: 34.10000, −118.33056
History
By 1937, Hollywood was already the world’s film production capital — its streets lined with studios, theaters, and the infrastructure of the entertainment industry that had grown there since the silent era. When the Works Progress Administration commissioned a new post office for Hollywood in 1937, the project went to Claud Beelman, the Los Angeles architect whose Art Deco work — including the Eastern Columbia Building (1930) and the Pellissier Building (1931) — had established him as one of the defining figures of Los Angeles commercial Art Deco in the previous decade. Beelman worked with the associated firm Allison & Allison, whose principal James E. Allison was also an experienced civic and institutional architect in Southern California.
The groundbreaking ceremony was performed by Will H. Hays, the former Postmaster General and head of the Motion Picture Production Code — the industry self-censorship office that he had led since 1922. That a national figure of Hays’s prominence performed the groundbreaking underscores the extent to which Hollywood had become a significant federal administrative presence in its own right by 1937. The building was also furnished with a WPA public art commission: Gordon Newell’s wooden bas-relief “The Horseman,” carved under the Treasury Relief Art Project, which today remains mounted above a doorway in the lobby — one of the best-preserved examples of Depression-era federal art in the Los Angeles region.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in January 1985 as part of the thematic nomination “US Post Office in California 1900-1941 TR” (NRHP #64000070). It remains an active post office and is among the few historic government buildings in Hollywood to survive substantially unchanged in a neighborhood that has undergone dramatic commercial redevelopment.
What you see
The Hollywood Station’s Art Deco facade is organized around the post office’s characteristic program: a central entrance bay with the building’s identifying lettering, flanked by windows arranged in vertical registers, with decorative spandrel panels and geometric Art Deco ornament at the entrance surround. The building’s smooth stone surfaces and the geometric precision of its window arrangement are typical of Beelman’s mature Art Deco style — a controlled vocabulary that achieves clarity without severity, ornament without excess.
Inside, the lobby bas-relief by Gordon Newell remains in place above a doorway. Newell carved the piece in wood under the Treasury Relief Art Project, one of the New Deal’s public art programs for unemployed artists that operated parallel to the better-known WPA mural commissions. The subject — a horseman, probably referencing the horse-drawn mail of the Pony Express tradition — is rendered in a stylized, semi-figurative manner consistent with the Treasury Relief Art Project’s approach to public art in federal buildings of the period. As an active post office in continuous use since 1937, the building retains the functional character of the original program in a way that few federal buildings of the period still do.
Practical information
- Active United States Post Office; the lobby and WPA bas-relief are accessible during post office operating hours.
- The exterior is freely visible from Wilcox Avenue at all times.
- Located in Hollywood between Sunset Boulevard (one block north) and Hollywood Boulevard (one block south).
Getting there
The Hollywood Station is at 1615 N. Wilcox Avenue, between Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is approximately 14 miles southwest. Hollywood/Highland and Hollywood/Vine Metro Red Line stations are both within 4 blocks. By car, US-101 (the Hollywood Freeway) runs immediately north of Hollywood Boulevard, with the Highland Avenue exit providing the most direct approach.
Nearby
- Pantages Theatre (1930) — a 2,691-seat Art Deco movie palace at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard, one block northeast; now a live theater venue
- Hollywood Walk of Fame — the 15-block stretch of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street with over 2,700 brass stars embedded in the terrazzo sidewalk, extending past the front of the post office
- Capitol Records Building (1956) — the cylindrical tower at 1750 Vine Street designed to resemble a stack of records; a Hollywood landmark 3 blocks east
Sources
- Wikipedia: “United States Post Office (Hollywood, Los Angeles)”
- National Register of Historic Places, listing #85000130, January 11, 1985
- NRHP thematic nomination: “US Post Office in California 1900-1941 TR” (#64000070)
- Wikimedia Commons: U.S._Post_Office_-_Hollywood_Station.JPG, CC BY-SA 3.0, Sanfranman59
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