UNCOVERED: After Six Years, Giant Supergraphic Ads Finally Come Down
CBS Outdoor has finally removed illegal supergraphic ads that have long dominated the surroundings of this 1926 building in Hollywood. As reported in the L.A. Times, the company, a subsidiary of CBS Corp., agreed to remove the 11-story signs after being sent a cease-and-desist letter by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich. A complaint about the two 27,000 sq. ft. vinyl ads was registered with the city in 2004, and an order to comply was issued by the Department of Building of Safety in June, 2006.
The building is occupied by Iron Mountain Film and Sound Archives, and property records list the owner as Mountain Real Estate Assets, Boston, Massachusetts. It was originally the site of the Toberman Storage Company, a moving and storage warehouse built by C.E. Toberman, a real estate developer sometimes known as “The Father of Hollywood” for his extensive development activities in the first half of the 20th century. The building, listed as a national historic resource, was designed by Arthur E. Harvey, an architect responsible for many notable Spanish Revival and Art Deco office and apartment buildings in Hollywood, mid-Wilshire, and Santa Monica, among other areas.
Just half a block north of the building at 1025 N. Highland Ave., a modern public storage building has also been long wrapped with unpermitted supergraphic ads, but on the day after the mammoth signs advertising Apple’s I-Pod and the Showtime TV series, “United States of Tara”were taken down, those signs (earlier sign pictured right) had also disappeared.
Another Harvey-designed historical building on Western Ave. had the bad luck to be slathered for several years with illegal advertising, but preservationists succeeded last year in getting the building owner to remove the signs. Known as the Selig Clothing Store, the Art Deco building is on the city’s list of Cultural-Historic monuments.
Dennis Hathaway
