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The light was right, and there was a parking space out front. This is Bullocks Wilshire – 3050 Wilshire Boulevard – from 1929, designed by Los Angeles architects John and Donald Parkinson. It was the ultimate department store – Mae West, John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich, Alfred Hitchcock, Greta Garbo and Clark Gable shopped here. Teen-aged Angela Lansbury worked as a sales clerk here, and future First Lady Patricia Nixon did too. And then it slowly faded, year after year, and finally, in the Los Angeles riots of 1992 – after the Rodney King verdict – looters broke in and smashed every display case on the first floor and set at least three fires. The place wasn't worth saving. Bullocks Wilshire, by then part of the Macy's chain, finally closed it in 1993 – and Macy's stripped the store of its historic artifacts, furnishings and fixtures for its other locations. In 1994 what was left of this old Art Deco building was acquired by Southwestern Law School, and the school slowly restored the building to its original 1929 state, and put pressure on Macy's. You don't mess with lawyers. Almost all the 1929 fixtures were returned.
But it's closed to the public – it's now a law school after all – classrooms and libraries and moot courtrooms and offices. But it is still standing.
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