Guided Tours  •  Self-Guided Downtown Tour
 

Originally the home of a utility company, the Southern California Edison Company Building was one of the first all-electrically heated and cooled buildings constructed in the western United States.

The fourteen-story, steel-framed building follows a classically inspired Art Deco design. The lower three stories are of solid limestone, while the upper stories and central tower are faced with buff-colored terra cotta. On the façade, the spandrels contain a cubic Art Deco pattern, repeated in the central tower, lobby floor and elevator ceilings. On the entry façade allegorical figures by sculptor Merrell Gage represent, light, power and hydroelectric energy.

In the two-story lobby, classical elements are treated with an Art Deco flavor. Below the 30-foot high coffered ceiling, the floor and walls are composed of at least 17 different types of marble. At the end of the lobby is a mural by Hugo Ballin entitled "The Apotheosis of Power."

The exterior greenhouse-like structures were added in the 1980s and the street-level shopping corridor in 1993.