Santa Fe Freight Depot

Infobox_nrhp | name =Santa Fe Freight Depot
nrhp_type =


caption = Santa Fe Freight Depot, 2008
location= 970 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles, California
lat_degrees = 34
lat_minutes = 2
lat_seconds = 42
lat_direction = N
long_degrees = 118
long_minutes = 13
long_seconds = 58
long_direction = W
locmapin = California
area =
built =1922
architect= Leonardt, Carl; Albright, Harrison
architecture= Beaux Arts
added = January 03, 2006
governing_body = Private
refnum=05001498cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2008-04-15|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]

Santa Fe Freight Depot is a quarter-mile-long building in the industrial area to the east of Downtown Los Angeles, now known as the Arts District. SCI-Arc architectural school converted the structure into its campus in 2000. The building, which has helped revitalize a neighborhood previously considered "a gritty corner of downtown," stretches longer than the Empire State Building.

Use as a freight depot

Built in 1907, the depot was designed by Harrison Albright, a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete, as a railroad freight depot. The Santa Fe Coast lines secured the property along the Los Angeles River and spent approximately $300,000 building the enormous concrete building. [cite news|title=Big Projects of Santa Fe: Nearly Half a Million for Local Facilities; Plan for Great Freight Yard Greatly Appreciated; San Francisco Terminals Also to be Expanded|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=1906-01-11] The depot was built to replace a freight center that had burned to the ground, and the narrow steel-reinforced concrete structure became a local landmark.cite news|author=Bob Pool|title=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|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=2004-02-12] At convert|1250|ft|m in length, the building is so long that, if it were upended, it would be as tall as the Empire State Building. [cite news|title=Mayor Riordan Breaks Ground for Architecture School's New Downtown Campus|publisher=Business Wire|date=2001-03-27|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2001_March_27/ai_72347686] The building had 120 bays with opening on both sides, allowing freight cars to unload on one side while trucks were loaded on the other side.cite news|author=Greg Goldin|title=Open Doors: SCI-Arc rediscovers itself -- and the city -- downtown|publisher=LA Weekly|date=2001-09-21|url=http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/art/open-doors/4538/]

Conversion to SCI-Arc's campus

By the 1990s, the depot was a vacant building covered in grafitti. The building had been stripped to the concrete, with a single room as long as four football fields. Then, in 2000, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc, obtained a lease on the property with plans to relocate its campus to the location.cite news|author=Jesus Sanchez|title=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|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=2000-04-19] Over the next two years, SCI-Arc renovated and converted the building, considered an "industrial leftover," into a convert|61000|sqft|m2|sing=on state-of-the-art architecture school.cite news|author=Joseph Giovannini|url=http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/BTS/archives/adaptiveReuse/03_sciArk/overview.asp|title=An architect transforms a freight depot for his alma mater and employer in a quarter-mile-long structure|publisher=Architectural Recrod|date=2007-09-17] The renovation was designed by SCI-Arc graduate and faculty member Gary Paige who described the building as a "found object -- one with ceilings up to convert|20|ft|m high and broad views of the downtown skyline." Paige also added: "We like the unrelenting and extreme nature of the building."cite news|author=Christopher Reynolds|title=First the Trains, Now the Arts|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=2002-07-21] One reviewer noted that the structure was a mixed blessing: "Time had been generous to it, giving the interior surfaces a seasoned patina akin to character lines on a wise face. The problem was typology: Being as long as the Empire State Building is tall, the shotgun building was unremittingly linear, with only one jog breaking the monotony of its quarter-mile length." Another review called wrote:

"The recombinant building is a lesson in engineering and architecture. Thirty thousand square feet of studios and seminar spaces, a workshop, a thesis pit and a bridge to the library have been stacked, cantilevered and suspended to form an open-ended, permissive, flexible space. It seems that anything can happen within these walls. Enter a studio through its doorway (which has no door), and you are standing on what is more like a stage, looking out through a proscenium framed by new steel posts and girders set parallel to and in tandem with the old concrete columns and beams."

Prior to the opening of the SCI-Arc campus, the neighborhood around the depot was referred to as a "gritty corner of downtown." Since 2000, SCI-Arc's presence has helped revitalize the neighborhood. However, the area's revitalization has driven up the property's value and resulted in an expensive legal battle that ended with a determination in June 2005 that SCI-Arc did not have the right to purchase the depot building and land in which its campus is located. [cite news|author=Jeffrey L. Rabin|title=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 L.A.|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=2005-06-22] A developer also purchased the vacant land to the west of Sci-Arc, announcing plans in 2004 to construct a pair of 40-story towers, each with 384 luxury apartments.

Pritzker Prize-winner and SCI-Arc co-founder Thom Mayne wrote an editorial in 2005 urging the city to step in to make sure that SCI-Arc was encouraged and preserved as an important urban catalyst for Downtown Los Angeles. Mayne noted that SCI-Arc had taken root in the neighborhood bringing hundreds of young people into the once-abandoned area, and noted that SCI-Arc's move to the former freight depot was "the prototype of an institution that resonates with energy and creativity." [cite news|author=Thom Mayne|title=Commentary: A Downtown Resource in Danger|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=2005-05-09]

Historic designation

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

ee also

*List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles
*Southern California Institute of Architecture

References