I've had a crush on the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles since the early-1960s, when I first saw it on the slip jacket of a Nat King Cole 45. As a kid, I loved the Jetsons quality of the building, with its stout, cylindrical facade and silver spike at the top. It looked like flying cars could park on every level.
Hearing the Cole single as a child, I just assumed that's where all music came from. I also recall wondering whether it was a real building or just an imaginative drawing of one. And if it was real, I figured that Cole lived there.
This past Saturday, I finally had the chance to express my admiration for the building—which I've long viewed as Los Angeles's Eiffel Tower. No other buidling in L.A. better expresses the city's sunny, futuristic vision and its passion for music across multiple decades. As many JazzWax readers know, I write occasionally on architecture for The Wall Street Journal, with a focus on the buildings and architects I admire most. So it was particularly gratifying to track down the tower's original architect, Lou Naidorf (above), who is now 88, to talk about how the iconic building came to be. Several surprises came out of that interview.
In case you missed my "Masterpiece" column in the WSJ's Review section over the weekend on the Capitol Records Tower, you'll find it here.
And here's a fun promotional film for the tower in 1958 (two years after the building opened) narrated by Tennessee Ernie Ford with a vocal voice-over by Sue Raney...
from JazzWax http://ift.tt/2ff1zWt
No comments:
Post a Comment