Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 30, 1992

By the time I was born, Ralphs Grocery had already existed for over a century. My parents shopped for groceries there, and now I shop there too. It’s such a mundane part of my life, I would never even think to consider where it came from. Ralphs just is. Once you start wandering down the long aisles of Ralphs history though, you quickly realize how important it is – to the growth of Los Angeles, and to the history of shopping.

Built in 1929, the old Ralphs Grocery Store buildings at the corner of Westwood and Lindbrook in Westwood Village is one of the very few Ralphs locations intact from the company’s early days of expansion. It’s been divided into multiple businesses over the years, but the facade and its signature red-tiled dome offer visual and historic connections to the Westwood of yesteryear. 

To better understand the importance of this particular Ralphs building, we need to go back to the company’s origins – and Westwood’s.

Ralphs’s Early Days

The first Ralphs-related market opened on Fifth and Hill in 1873, as a venture between George Ralphs and S.A. Francis. George had abandoned his career as a mason a few years earlier, after a hunting accident left him with one less arm. Two years later George’s brother Walter bought out Francis’s share, and by 1876, the brothers had built a new, two-story shop on Sixth and Spring: Ralphs Bros. Grocers.

Even in those early days, Ralphs were pioneering many of the innovations that shoppers now take for granted. The store on Sixth and Spring was the first proper supermarket in the city, with room enough for all manner of produce and canned goods, and high enough volume that Ralphs could keep prices low. The Ralphs were able to acquire that much fresh stock thanks in part to providing rooms for farmers to stay. Imagine what an incentive that’d be for a rural farmer to bring in a large harvest of grains, produce and eggs, if he knew that there was a warm bed waiting for him after a long day’s journey, and stables for his horses.

Ralphs offered home delivery for decades, like many other stores. But even early on, they focused more on cash-n-carry shopping. In the late 1800s, most of LA’s population was centered around downtown. Ralphs was central enough that customers could walk in and carry their groceries out. By the late 1920s, Ralphs became the first major market to abandon home delivery entirely in favor of self service, plus large parking lots to accommodate LA’s growing car culture. They even introduced the concept of the checkout stand, and much later, checkout scanners.

Expansion

Ralphs’s flagship store moved to 514 S. Spring Street in 1901, and a decade later, the brothers began expanding with their first branch location, on Pico and Normandie. For the next few decades, Ralphs grew rapidly into one of the most recognizable supermarket chains in LA.

Their strategy involved hiring notable architects to design unique-looking Ralphs in the latest styles. The renowned firm of Morgan, Walls and Clements gave LA a grand Spanish colonial one on the Miracle Mile stretch of Wilshire, and another in Pasadena with more of a Moorish facade, both in the late ‘20s. Just before America entered WWII, Clements and his reconfigured firm would design a flurry of art deco Ralphs in East Hollywood, Beverly Hills, North Hollywood, Santa Monica, Whittier, Hollywood, Burbank, the Crenshaw District and Sherman Oaks. Nearly all of these have been demolished or altered beyond recognition. 

Opened in 1929, Ralphs Westwood was the sixteenth branch in the expanding Ralphs empire. And while it followed the company’s basic pattern of expansion (respected architect + trendy design style), it is also historically distinguished as one of the original six buildings in Westwood Village.

Westwood Ho

The topographically diverse land that would become Westwood and UCLA was part of the Rancho San Jose de Buenos Aires land grant, given in 1843 just a few years before California became part of the United States. A rancher and politician named John Wolfskill bought it in the 1880s, and after he died, the English investor Arthur Letts bought the entire property. Letts happened to be the father-in-law of Harold Janss – the scion of a fabulously successful family-owned development company, with subdivisions in Monterey Park, Boyle Heights and the San Fernando Valley. The Janss Corporation had their eyes on a portion of the Letts land south of Wilshire Boulevard, which they purchased in 1922. Letts died the following year (very convenient!), and as executors of his estate, the Janss Corporation took control of his remaining land.

Around the same time, the Regents of the University of California were looking for a new home for UCLA (their original campus was located on Vermont just below Santa Monica, where LA Community College is today). The Janss Corporation lobbied hard for UCLA to choose their land, and in March of 1925, after entertaining 16 other sites, they did.

This was a unique private-public partnership. Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica raised $1.3 million in bond issues to purchase the land and deed it to UCLA, the founder of Brentwood and Bel Air donated eight acres to the university, and the Janss Corporation began to develop the area to the south and east.

Before UCLA came along, there was no housing, no restaurants, no shops or entertainment in Westwood. The Janss Corporation put together a master plan that would create a commercial district, Westwood Village, that was essentially purpose-built for the university. The plan recommended a uniform architectural aesthetic (vaguely Mediterranean, with Spanish colonial and classical vibes), plus parkways and landscaping to welcome both pedestrians and motorists. Roofs were red tile, walls were ivory-colored, and corner buildings tended to have towers to make them easy landmarks for getting around. An architecture jury oversaw all new building projects to ensure that any new additions to Westwood Village were in line with the look and feel of the area.

Tower of Power

Ralphs Westwood was part of the original suite of buildings created for Westwood Village. It was designed by Russell Collins, an architect with offices just down the street from Ralphs headquarters downtown. He created an L-shaped building that would straddle both sides of the corner, with a cylindrical tower in the center, and an octagonal projection up top to let in more light. The main walls were all covered in stucco, then scored to give the impression of stone masonry. The whole thing was topped by traditional Spanish tile.

The Westwood Ralphs boasted 10,000 square feet of floorspace, state-of-the-art refrigeration and even restrooms and phone service (both somewhat novel in the late ‘20s). It was designed to accommodate 10,000 customers a day. Interior pictures from the mid-1930s show heaping mounds of citrus, an ice cream kiosk and a well-stocked butcher case. Newspaper ads from December 1929 prominently advertise Christmas trees and candy specials (“We Are Headquarters for Christmas Candies”), butter and bread from the in-house Ralphs creamery and bakery, alongside a combination pancake/waffle iron. This place had it all.

Opening weekend sounds like quite the humdinger. Held November 21-23, 1929 just two months after UCLA admitted its first class to the new campus, the grand opening brought in 250 “food experts” to demonstrate some 1000 products. A local rag declared the event one of the most “auspicious occasions ever witnessed in the community,” while the Los Angeles Times gushed about the building itself, calling it “one of the most beautiful exclusive grocery marts in the West.” 

Later Life

The property remained a Ralphs through the mid-1960s, after which it was reimagined as a quirky medieval restaurant called Brätskellar, serving bratwurst, hamburgers and corned beef sandwiches. Eventually those 10,000 square feet were divvied up and turned into separate storefronts, with a revolving door of businesses occupying them. One section on the south was remodeled as a movie theater in 1970; after four different incarnations, it’s set to open as a bouldering gym called Sender One in late 2023. On the side facing Westwood Boulevard you’ll find a Sweetfin, T-Mobile shop and the Westwood Village Synagogue.

And how about the corner stall, where the main Ralphs entrance was? That was a Dole Café in the early 1990s, then a Peet’s Coffee for a while. These days it’s an Alfred Coffee. The interior has been completely redone, and were it not for the framed photo of Ralphs Westwood as it was back in the ‘40s, you’d never know the building’s provenance. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Aldrich, Dave: “A Streamlined Approach for Ralphs” (Pleasant Family Shopping blog, August 31, 2008) 

+ Aldrich, Dave: “Ralphs Westwood Through the Years” (Pleasant Family Shopping blog, August 24, 2008)

+ “Announcement: Sender One Westwood” (senderoneclimbing.com, November 1, 2019)

+ “Business Units Will Be Opened” (Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1929 – via ProQuest)

+ Cataldo, Nick: “George Ralphs was a grocery pioneer in the Inland Empire” (The San Bernardino Sun, January 23, 2023)

+ Counter, Bill: “UA Westwood / Egyptian / Odeon Cinema / Mann Festival” (Los Angeles Theatres blog)

+ Kelleher, Kathleen: “ The Quest for a Place in History : Former Ralphs Building May Get a Place on National Register (Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1992)

+ Lovett, Evan: “Ralphs: America’s Oldest Grocer” (@lainaminute on TikTok, July 19, 2023) 

+ Petten, OW van: “Westwood: The Case of the Bartered Bride” (Los Angeles Times, October 26, 1969 – via ProQuest)

+ Masters, Nathan: “The Birth of Ralphs Bros. Grocers” (USC Libraries, Apr 14, 2020)

+ McAvoy, Christie Johnson | Historic Resources Group: Ralphs Grocery Store’s NRHP nomination form

+ “Ralphs (Demolished)” (LA Conservancy website) 

+ “Ralphs Grocery Company” (Encyclopedia.com)

+ Reft, Ryan: “Retail California: Ralphs, the Big Lebowski, and Shaping the American Shopping Experience” (PBSSocal.org, 2023)