Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 14, 1971. Declared a National Historic Landmark on May 5, 1977.

There are strange paradoxes at work in the Bradbury Building. Its omnipresence in film, TV and music videos has made it one of the most recognizable buildings in Los Angeles, even though most of us have never seen the upper floors with our own eyes. It’s often called the oldest extant commercial building in the city of Los Angeles, and yet it still feels like a vision of the future inside. Its transcendent inner court deserves all the praise it’s ever received, and more – but historians continue to debate who deserves the credit for its design. 

All these mysteries and subtle frictions have helped the Bradbury Building maintain its status as one of LA’s most beloved buildings for over 130 years now. They create space for stories to accumulate, like the one about a supernatural encounter that may or may not have inspired a young draftsman to take the job of designing the Bradbury (more on that later). Whether or not it’s true, I suggest we want to believe it, because the Bradbury is the kind of space that deserves lore, not just architecture fans. And that lore deepens every time an unforgettable movie like Double Indemnity or Blade Runner or The Artist is shot there.

While the heart of the Bradbury is its inside, the journey of experiencing this building begins outside. There is something ancient about the facades that face 3rd Street and Broadway. Like even though it’s got that same classical three-part arrangement as so many older office buildings downtown, the Bradbury feels earthier, squatter, maybe even heavier. The brownish-red sandstone and brick of the outside reinforces that sense that the Bradbury Building isn’t just a manmade building: it’s emerged from the earth. 

Open the doors at the Broadway entrance, and the heaviness of the outside immediately lifts. Light reflecting off the tiled floor and glazed brick walls beckons you forward. You get your first glimpse of the Bradbury’s majestic staircases, with spectacular marble treads and metal risers nearly as detailed as the art nouveau railings.

You could spend hours admiring just the intricate wrought ironwork, the railings with their floral coats of arms and protruding lion’s claws securing them to the stairs, and the balustrades that guard every balcony with licorice curlicues. Down on the bottom floor, where most of us will spend all of our time at the Bradbury, that masterful ironwork is also on display on the old mail chutes, the frame of the directory board, and the intensely detailed grillwork of the two elevator cages. 

There’s a lot to take in here, with shape and texture and color and proportion all mixing in playful yet calculated ways. Wood and iron, marble and brick, tile and glass meet in unexpected places, in unorthodox color combinations. The rigid rectangles of brick walls crash into the sensual swirls of an elevator cage. And while you can get lost in the details, there’s a gestalt to appreciate, too. The Bradbury is music as much as it is architecture, with endless rhythms of balconies and balustrades, archways and staircases, composing and re-composing themselves as your eye moves around the atrium.

Look up, and another essential material reveals itself: LIGHT, streaming down from the massive glass canopy five stories up, drenching the entire atrium in a natural glow. Light plays off every surface differently, even shining through the marble landings, and the way light impacts the space changes throughout the day. 

Since the 1990s, when the Los Angeles Police Department’s Internal Affairs division became a primary tenant at the Bradbury, access to the second floor and above has been strictly limited to tenants and their guests (that hasn’t changed since the LAPD moved out). I was lucky enough to be invited up for a meeting at the co-working space on the second floor, and experience all the ways that the light changes as you move around. Walkways circle the atrium on each floor, leading from office to office. Just above each walkway is the wood-paneled underside of the walkway on the floor above, which means you’re shaded as you stroll around the space. But you can always see that central core of light, and inevitably you’re drawn to it. Especially on the second-floor mezzanine level, with its uncovered balconies projecting out into the atrium. Best seats in the house.

Walk upstairs and everything gets brighter, quieter and warmer. On the fifth floor, with no walkways above to protect you from the heat of the light shining through all that plate glass (much of it original and likely single-paned), it’s gotta be 10-15 degrees hotter than the lower floors. It’s worth the sweat though, to see those criss-crossing iron trusses and the mechanisms used to open the clerestory windows on the upper walls. 

Also way up at the top, you get a real sense of the industrial-age grandeur of those open cage elevators, with their gears and pulleys and wires and counterbalances, all working in tandem. The managers of the Bradbury have done a lot of work to maintain the old-world appearance of these beauties, even though they haven’t been powered by steam since at least the 1940s. Modern motors have made the large counterweights unnecessary; I’ve heard that the weights we see today are actually just foam, spray-painted black to look like a big stack of iron.

The Bradbury Building was commissioned by Lewis Leonard Bradbury, a Maine native who spent years as a sailor before settling in Mexico in the early 1860s. It was there that he invested in the Tajo silver and gold mine in Rosario, a bit south of Mazatlán in the state of Sinaloa. In 1867 he married a much younger Mexican woman named Simona Martinez, either Bradbury’s housekeeper or the daughter of the Tajo mine’s owner at the time, depending on which source you’re consulting. 

By the time Lewis, Simona and their five kids relocated to Oakland in the 1870s, the Bradburys were worth millions. Lewis was actively involved in LA’s development in the late 1800s – as but one example, he was on the Board of the Farmers and Merchants Bank, the first incorporated bank in Los Angeles. Lewis expanded his portfolio by buying up Southern California real estate, including 2,750 acres of the old Rancho Azusa de Duarte in the San Gabriel Valley. All or parts of Arcadia, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Duarte, Irwindale and Monrovia were built on land that Bradbury once owned. Duarte has a street named after him. And then there’s the family’s namesake city of Bradbury, currently home to a bit under 1,000 souls, several horse ranches and the only Frank Lloyd Wright building in LA County that you can’t see from the street. 

To augment their home in Oakland, the Bradburys built a country house on their San Gabriel Valley ranchland. By 1887 they also had an exuberant Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion in LA’s posh Bunker Hill neighborhood, designed by the primo practitioners of the style in California, Joseph Cather & Samuel Newsom. 

Without a doubt, Lewis Bradbury’s most enduring legacy in Los Angeles was the Bradbury Building. Bradbury suffered from asthma, and by the time he commissioned the construction of the building, his health was headed south. You often hear that the Bradbury Building was Lewis Bradbury’s way of perpetuating his own legacy. According to author and journalist Gloria Koenig, he envisioned an office building that was “a monument to his life, a structure that would reflect his vision of himself and his impact on the city of Los Angeles.” 

Bradbury owned the land on the southeast corner of 3rd Street and Broadway (née Fort Street) since 1890, after acquiring it for $100,000 from one of LA’s first druggists, Theodore Wollweber. The property was close enough to walk to from his house on Bunker Hill. Before he could erect anything, Bradbury sold off four frame buildings on the lot, each of which had to be moved elsewhere to the tune of $500 apiece. One was sold to James Boone Lankershim, scion of the family partly responsible for developing the San Fernando Valley.

To design his final gift to LA, Bradbury hired Sumner P. Hunt in 1891. Now this guy would go on to be one of the era’s most prominent LA architects, responsible for the Automobile Club of Southern California headquarters, the Southwest Museum, the Wilshire Ebell, the Edward Doheny Mansion (the one on Chester Place, not Greystone Mansion) and so many more glorious structures. But at the time Hunt was a 26-year-old up-and-comer who had just opened his own practice the same year.

Here’s where the story gets murky. For a long, long time, nobody had seen any of the original architectural drawings, which would offer important info about the Bradbury Building’s designer, and how its design evolved. We know that Sumner P. Hunt’s name was attached to the Bradbury Building in the public record at least as early as December 15, 1891, the date the general construction permit was pulled. But in late February of 1892, the Los Angeles Times reported that Bradbury had fired Hunt earlier that month. “No fault was found with the work,” says the Times article, “Mr. Bradbury merely stating that he did not require his services any further, and he accordingly paid him up and dispensed with him.” The article doesn’t state who Hunt’s replacement would be. 

A perspective drawing of the Bradbury Building, crediting Hunt as the architect, was published in the Illustrated Los Angeles Herald in early March of 1892 (I haven’t turned up a digital copy yet). But days later, the Herald published a correction, writing “This is an error, Mr. Sumner [Hunt] not being the architect.” Again, no indication of who was the architect at that point.

Many have conjectured that Lewis Bradbury was disappointed with Hunt’s plans. We may never know the real reason for Hunt’s dismissal. But by the summer of 1892, just after Lewis Bradbury’s death, the name George Herbert Wyman began to pop up in the papers in connection with the Bradbury Building. Wyman was an inexperienced draftsman in Hunt’s office. He got the job through his uncle, Luther Peters, who had recently moved his architecture firm from Dayton, Ohio to LA to design some of the early buildings at the Old Soldiers’ Home in west LA. Later he collaborated with Hunt on a couple downtown office buildings.

Think about this scenario from Wyman’s perspective: a fabulously rich, dying man approaches you, a draftsman with no architectural training, about designing and overseeing construction of a massive office building meant as a capstone for his life. And the job would involve taking a commission from your boss. That’s a lot of responsibility, and a very tough choice to make for someone as new to the field as Wyman.

So here’s where the supernatural stuff comes in. In her 1953 article “A Vast Hall Full of Light” for Arts + Architecture, the influential architectural critic Esther McCoy claimed that Wyman was so conflicted that he consulted his dead brother Mark through a planchette – kind of like a ouija board, with a pencil that would trace out messages from the spirit world. Mark wrote from the beyond “Take the Bradbury Building and you will be successful.”

Of course, there are those who believe this is all bullshit. McCoy’s sources for the planchette story were Wyman’s two daughters, Louise Hammell and Carroll Wyman. And how did McCoy find them? She rang up the great sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, who she had a hunch might be related to Lewis Bradbury. Ray wasn’t, but he connected McCoy with his agent Forrest J. Ackerman, a foundational figure in sci-fi, fantasy and horror literature, who also happened to be George Wyman’s grandson. Absolutely fascinating dude, and just the kind of guy that you might expect would be up for concocting a juicy occult myth to stir the pot and bolster the reputation of his ancestors. Ackerman swore until his death that the planchette story was accurate as his mom and aunt described it. He even claimed to be in possession of the authentic post-mortem message that grandpa Wyman received from his ghost bro. You can see a picture of it in Esotouric’s in-depth “Inside the Bradbury Building” webinar.

Another oft-repeated factoid is that Wyman was a big fan of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, an early sci-fi novel published in 1888. The book describes a commercial structure in the year 2000 that sounds an awful lot like the Bradbury Building, aside from the fountain: 

“…a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above. Beneath it, in the centre of the hall, a magnificent fountain played, cooling the atmosphere to a delicious freshness with its spray. The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior. Around the fountain was a space occupied with chairs and sofas, on which many persons were seated conversing.”

-Quote from Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward

Lewis Bradbury was also quite taken with the Bibliotheque Nationale and Le Bon Marché department store in Paris, both of which had wrought iron railings and a glazed canopy-like roof, just like the Bradbury Building. It isn’t inconceivable that Bradbury would sack Hunt for Wyman because they had similar visions for a great commercial building that could serve the Angelenos of the future. 

One crucial piece of evidence was discovered by accident by Paul McKelvey, whose family owned the Bradbury Building from 1943-1989. McKelvey was rooting around in the basement in 1986, and stumbled across a trove of turn-of-the-century architectural renderings. Among them was a precise drawing of the Bradbury Building’s 3rd Street elevation, looking strikingly similar to what we see today. It was signed “Geo. H. Wyman – Architect” and dated December 25, 1891, 10 days after Sumner Hunt had pulled the general construction permit. 

Paul McKelvey put the Bradbury rendering and all the others in a bright pink and purple ski bag for safekeeping, and moved them offsite. In 2018 he showed the trove to the folks at Esotouric, who immediately recognized the importance of what he had, and helped McKelvey donate the drawings to the Huntington Library. As of now the collection hasn’t been made available to researchers or the public. 

Wyman’s 1891 drawing is undoubtedly the work of a skilled draftsman, and you’d think that if Wyman had created the rendering as an employee of Hunt’s, he’d note the name of Hunt’s firm somewhere. So it seems plausible that Lewis Bradbury had privately asked Wyman to draft an alternate vision for the building, outside of his work with Hunt. 

However the rendering isn’t necessarily a smoking gun, because nobody has turned up the original Sumner P. Hunt plans. We may never know whether the Bradbury Building was purely the product of a maverick architect’s creativity, unhindered by classical training, or if the building reflects Sumner P. Hunt’s original plans, modified by George Wyman according to the whims of his client.

The fact remains that Wyman was publicly acknowledged in the press as the Bradbury Building’s sole architect by 1893. And Wyman himself claimed the design as his own, too. There’s a phenomenal photo from 1894 with a sign right above the entrance to the Bradbury Building, advertising where to find Wyman’s office: “Geo. H. Wyman, Architect of this Building, Room 12 Workman Bldg.” A couple years later, after he had taken a formal correspondence course in architecture, Wyman moved his office to room 306-307 of the Bradbury Building.

Whether or not this was purely Wyman’s design, there’s no question that he had a major impact on how the Bradbury Building turned out. During excavation workers dug into an underground spring that threatened to undermine the foundation. Wyman laid down massive steel beams for extra support, then built a pipe system leading to a central cistern. The ingenious solution helped to keep the basement dry, and also collected water for all the steam needed to power the elevators, and other water appliances throughout the building.

Though it referenced myriad old-world styles, the Bradbury Building was thoroughly modern for its day. There were telephone lines in every room. It was piped for gas, with an independent meter for each room, and wired for electricity very early on in LA’s history with private electric utilities. The Los Angeles Herald called the insulating system for the building’s electrical wiring one of “the first, as well as the most complete, plant of the kind in California.” 

The Bradbury Building used 350 tons of steel and 400 tons of iron for the support columns and girders, not counting the spectacular roof trusses or decorative ironwork. Workers installed $14,000 worth of glass, including some of the largest plate glass windows used in LA up that point for the store windows on the bottom floor. Outside, it was encased in $30,000 of red sandstone from the Arizona Sandstone company, the same firm that dressed up T.D. Stimson’s impressive residence at 2421 S. Figueroa Street. Nearly 18,000 feet of tin was laid on the roof, and the Blinn Lumber Company supplied over 800,000 feet of lumber for the construction process itself. The offices were decked out with 100 fireplaces, with mantels of quarter-sawn oak. The two hydraulic passenger elevators could carry up to 1,000 pounds per load, and a third freight elevator could lift up to 6,000 pounds when it was moving slowly. 

All those numbers added up. The Bradbury Building cost a staggering $500,000, nearly three times its original estimate. Sadly its patron never lived to see its completion. Lewis Bradbury died in July of 1892, nearly a year and a half before the building opened. As one of the executors of his estate, Bradbury’s wife Simona helped to oversee the building’s completion – the Herald singled her out for praise for her decisionmaking regarding the mantels, wainscoting and floor finishes. Simona would continue to develop the family’s property, and even hired Wyman again to design another office complex at First Street and Broadway. They called it the Tajo Building, named after the mine that made the Bradburys rich. After Simona died in 1902, the Bradbury estate continued to work with Wyman. A building permit from June 23, 1909 shows him returning to his greatest project to remodel the storefronts on the first floor.

The Bradbury had no trouble finding tenants early on. Pictures from 1894, the year of its opening, shows investment and life insurance companies, doctors and dentists, and a druggist in the corner storefront where Blue Bottle Coffee is today. Newspaper ads and listings from later that decade show a stationery company, a piano store, a patent agent, attorneys, a company specializing in fireplace parts, even the Longley Institute, where one might learn shorthand. 

The Bradbury endured two world wars, earthquakes, and a fire in 1947 that broke out in a curtain manufacturing company on the top floor. It witnessed the evolution of downtown Los Angeles, too. Important structures like Sid Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater and the Homer Laughlin Building (home to Grand Central Market) sprouted up on the same block along Broadway, and became landmarks of their own. The Bradbury family’s old mansion on Bunker Hill was demolished in 1929, followed by Bunker Hill itself a few decades later. 

Even as downtown gave way to Hollywood as LA’s entertainment center, filmmakers started to shoot the inside of the Bradbury in the ‘40s. Its built-in chiaroscuro was especially perfect for noir films like The Unfaithful (1947), Shockproof (1949), D.O.A. (1950) I, The Jury (1953) and a 1951 remake of M.

By the time Esther McCoy wrote about it in 1953, the Bradbury Building was “no longer the most popular place for law firms,” but it’s always served its intended use as office and retail space, even as other venerable office buildings downtown have been converted to loft spaces or low-income housing. Mid-century, textile firms occupied many of the top four floors. As mentioned earlier, the LAPD’s Internal Affairs division used to grill employees it suspected of malfeasance at the Bradbury, in offices known as “the ovens.” Marvel Comics had an office here, and it was even the headquarters for a Marvel superhero team called The Order. NeueHouse left the Bradbury a few years before they went bankrupt in 2025; now the Bradbury itself rents out coworking spaces. 

Photos from the ‘60s show a huge variety of businesses on the bottom floor, from bridal shops to record stores and restaurants. Just south of the Broadway entrance is Ross Cutlery, where OJ Simpson bought the knife he allegedly used to kill his wife and Ron Goldman. Some of the signs contain Spanish, reflecting downtown’s changing demographics of the time. Beginning in the ‘60s, Many of the attorneys and notaries renting rooms upstairs were bilingual, and specialized in helping recent immigrants from Mexico and Central/South America. Check out this photo from 1968, showing the main entrance to the Bradbury, stuffed with signage for a small travel kiosk in English and Spanish. 

The Bradbury has long been a magnet for artists and creative agencies, no doubt drawn to the romance of that interior court. The Inner City Art Gallery opened on the top floor in 1968, showcasing both visual arts and theater productions. There is an amazing photo of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller on one of the landings at the Bradbury with artist Yanko Varda (cousin to film director Agnès Varda), likely dating to late 1968 when Varda had a show of his collages at the gallery. 

Today architecture firms account for 25% of the Bradbury Building’s upper floor tenants, a trend that started in the late ‘60s when the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects moved in. That decision prompted the Bradbury’s owners the McKelveys to restore parts of the aging landmark in hopes of attracting more creative professionals. They spent $100,000 to install an AC system, fix the second elevator and reface the Bradbury’s sandstone facade. In the late ‘70s, the McKelveys also created a 120-seat banquet area on the bottom floor, which became a popular meeting place for a colorful list of social clubs like the Sherlock Holmes Society, Count Dracula Society and the Calcutta Saddle & Cycle Club.

During the 1980s the Bradbury Building faced multiple existential threats, not due to crumbling walls or declining tenant rates, but from the city’s enforcement of strict building and safety codes. A new fire code adopted by the LA City Council in 1979 would have forced the iconic marble and wrought iron staircases to be enclosed, clearly a non-starter for anyone who’s ever set foot in the Bradbury. The public was very much on the side of preserving the building as-is – even our old friend Esther McCoy wrote a letter to the editor in 1981, decrying the city’s mandate: “Why this zeal of Building and Safety to destroy an architectural gem while being lenient with buildings with no architectural content?” 

The Bradbury Building’s manager Terry McKelvey appealed in 1981 and worked out a compromise to install fire alarms and sprinklers, to the tune of $200,000. Just two years later, the Department of Building and Safety came back to demand that the Bradbury be retrofitted to meet new seismic codes, or face potential demolition. The McKelveys didn’t have the money to make that happen. Thankfully, in November of 1983, the Community Redevelopment Agency helped them sell the building’s “air rights” to a Japanese real estate developer for $1.1 million. The money was used to pay for the seismic upgrades, saving the Bradbury from the wrecking ball. A million architecture fans breathed a sigh of relief. 

It feels somehow significant that, during this period when the Bradbury was saved from destruction by a Japanese company purchasing the rights to build in nearby airspace, it had its most famous cameo as an abandoned building in Blade Runner (1982), a movie suffused with soaring skyscrapers, futuristic aircraft and Japanese cyberpunk aesthetics.

In 1989 developer Ira Yellin bought the Bradbury for $8 million in an off-market deal, not long after purchasing the Million Dollar Theater and Grand Central Market across the street. His grand plan was to revive the historic buildings at 3rd Street and Broadway into a “Grand Central Square,” playing up their turn-of-the-century charms to try to jumpstart a renaissance of LA’s historic core. 

For the Bradbury piece of the plan, Yellin hired restoration architect Brenda Levin, known for her work on downtown landmarks like the Oviatt Building and the Subway Terminal Building. Levin’s interventions brought the Bradbury up to modern fire safety and seismic standards, and conserved the exterior and interior finishes – the sandstone, brick, marble floors and cast iron all got a glow up. Levin & Associates cleaned and repaired the atrium skylight, keeping as much of the 1890s glass as possible. One major adjustment was to turn a storage area on the southern end into a rear entrance for tenants, leading to Biddy Mason Memorial Park and the parking structure behind the Bradbury.

As you’d expect with a 130-something-year-old building, the Bradbury still requires the occasional upkeep. Its owner since 2003, Downtown Properties, bankrolled a complete restoration of the sandstone, marble and masonry by the historic construction company Spectra. They came back in 2025 to recreate the sandstone “Y” in the “BRADBURY” lettering above the main entrance, which had just kinda…fallen off.

Despite the many changes that the Bradbury has undergone throughout its long life (I wish they’d bring back the crown-like parapets that you can see in old photos), its essential character has remained intact. The clickety-clack of the old steam-powered hydraulic elevator may have been replaced by the quiet whirring of a modern motor long ago, but the Bradbury is still a prestigious address for creative professionals, and a regular destination for walking tours and looky-loos. Stepping away from the hubbub of Broadway and entering into the light-filled glory of that atrium is one of the most sensual pleasures you can get for free in LA. It never gets old.

+ Watch my playlist of all the music videos I could find that were shot at the Bradbury Building.

Thanks to Kim Cooper of Esotouric & Chris Nichols of Los Angeles Magazine for permitting me to use their photos.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Andersen, Thom: Los Angeles Plays Itself (MOVIE – 2003, via Internet Archive)

+ “Art News: Finkelstein Show Cited (Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1968 – via ProQuest)

“As our local columns some weeks ago…” (Los Angeles Herald, November 13, 1890 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Bernal, Victoria: “The Savvy Mexican Businesswoman Behind the Iconic Bradbury Building” (PBSSocal.org, September 23, 2021)

+ “The Bradbury Block.” (Los Angeles Herald, March 13, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Bradbury Building” (SpectraCompany.com)

+ “Bradbury Building Renovation” (Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1989)

+ Bradbury Building website

+ “The Bradbury Will.” (Los Angeles Herald, July 20, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Breisch, Kenneth A.: “Bradbury Building” (SAH Archipedia) 

+ “Changed Architects” (Los Angeles Times, February 29, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Cooper, Kim: “For our 12th (linen) wedding anniversary, we delivered the Bradbury Building basement hoard to the Huntington Library” (Esotouric.com, June 29, 2018)

+ Crandell, John: “George, Sumner, Esther and a Jokester Named Ray” (PDF – 2018, via Academia.edu)

+ Duane, Erin & Liz Phillips: “Bradbury Family Papers: A Mexican-American Family’s Story, 1876-1965” (UC Davis Library)

+ “Esotouric Takes You ‘Inside the Bradbury Building’ On-demand Webinar” (VIDEO – Esotouricvideo.substack.com, November 28, 2022)

+ “Eternal Rest: Funeral of L.L. Bradbury at Mountain View” (Oakland Tribune, July 18, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Ferrell, David: “The Bradbury Sparkles as Jewel in City Landscape” (Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2002)

+ “Geo. H. Wyman. Architect” (AD – Los Angeles Herald, November 1, 1896 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Geo. H. Wyman, Architect, Room 13 Workman Building” (Los Angeles Evening Express, November 1, 1893 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Goffard, Christopher, Joel Rubin, Kurt Streeter & Doug Stevens: “The Manhunt for Christopher Dorner” (Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2013)

+ “The Handsome Bradbury Block” (Los Angeles Herald, August 13, 1893 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Head, Jeffrey: “The Bradbury Building…Plays Itself” (Medium.com, May 29, 2021)

+ Hebert, Ray: “Architects Will Move In: New Life for Old L.A. Building” (Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1968 – via ProQuest)

+ Hebert, Ray: “Sale of Air Rights May Save Bradbury Building in L.A.” (Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1983 – via ProQuest)

+ “His Race Is Run: Death of L.L. Bradbury, the Millionaire Mine-owner.” (Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “A Home for the Herald” (Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, August 1, 1900 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Kinchen, David M.: “Clock Stands Still Inside Historic Bradbury Building” (Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1976 – via ProQuest)

+ Kines, Mark Tapio: “Bradbury Avenue” (LAStreetNames.com)

+ Koenig, Gloria: Iconic LA (Balcony Press, 2000)

+ “LAPD Unit to Move to Historic Building” (Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1996)

+ “Louis Leonard Bradbury” (CityOfBradbury.org) 

+ Marshall, Colin: “Los Angeles in Buildings: The Bradbury Building” (PBSSoCal.org, November 29, 2016)

+ Masters, Nathan, William Deverell, David L. Ulin & Christopher Hawthorne: “What Makes L.A. the ‘Capital of Science Fiction?’” (PBSSoCal.org, October 26, 2016)

+ McCoy, Esther: “A Vast Hall Full of Light: The Bradbury Building” (PDF – Arts + Architecture, April 1953 – via USModernist)

+ McCoy, Esther: Letter to the Editor in “Saving the Bradbury Building” (Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1981 – via ProQuest)

+ Muchnic, Suzanne: “Old Friends Meet Again : Bradbury Building, 98, Sits for Photographer, 80” (Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1991)

+ “New Shine for an Old Gem: Renovated Bradbury Building is a credit to Los Angeles architecture” (Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1991)

+ “News and Business” (Los Angeles Evening Express, February 22, 1894 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Nichols, Chris: “Downtown’s Landmark Bradbury Building Gets a Glow Up” (Los Angeles Magazine, October 15, 2025)

+ Noriyuki, Duane: “A Hard Fall From Grace : He once had it all–a good job, money, power. Now he’s homeless. What happened to Terry McKelvey?” (Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1994)

+ “The Palatial Bradbury Block” (Los Angeles Herald, January 1, 1894 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Patents – And Patent Agents” (AD – Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1894 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Pitts, Carolyn: Bradbury Building’s NRHP nomination form

+ Rasmussen, Cecilia: “Sifting Myth From History at the Bradbury” (Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2000)

+ Ryon, Ruth: “Downtown Landmark Purchased : Ira Yellin, partners, to spend $4 million to restore venerable Bradbury Building.” (Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1989)

+ Seldis, Henry J. & William Wilson: “A Critical Guide to the Galleries” (Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1968 – via ProQuest)

+ “Shaw Piano” (AD – Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1895 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Shorthand should be learned…” (AD – Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1894 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Sold at Auction.” (Los Angeles Evening Express, October 30, 1891 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Some Big Derricks” (Los Angeles Evening Express, August 16, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Spirit World ‘Tip’ Was Aid to Draftsman” (Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1963 – via ProQuest)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “No Place Like Home Through the Viewfinder: A Cabinet Card Photo of The Bradbury Mansion, Los Angeles, ca. 1888” (Homestead Museum Blog, February 17, 2024)

+ Streeter, Kurt: “Ira Yellin, 62; Civic Leader and Longtime Champion of the City’s Historic Core” (Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2002)

+ Thackrey, Ted Jr.: “Bradbury Building May Be Boarded Up” (Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1981 – via ProQuest)

+ T.T. Knight & Son (AD – Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, July 25, 1896 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “To Stimulate Enterprise.” (Los Angeles Evening Express, July 20, 1892 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Trufelman, Avery: “99% Invisible Episode 172: On Location” (PODCAST – 99percentinvisible.org, July 14, 2015)

+ Turpin, Dick: “Bradbury to Be Elegant Again” (Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1969 – via ProQuest)

+ “Tuttle Mercantile Company: Mantels Mantels Mantels” (AD – Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1895 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Tuttle Mercantile Company: Save Coal” (AD – Los Angeles Evening Express, September 20, 1895 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Vincent, Roger: “Hong Kong Investor With Eye on the Past Acquires Landmark Bradbury Building” (Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2003)

+ Vincent, Roger: “NeueHouse to expand co-working space into historic Bradbury Building” (Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2019)