Chapman Plaza, Los Angeles

Why you should experience Chapman Plaza in Los Angeles, California.

Chapman Plaza is a storied commercial enclave where Koreatown's nocturnal character meets courtyard dining, automobile-era urban form and one of the district's most enduring gathering places.

Set along West 6th Street near South Alexandria Avenue and just steps from the Wilshire Boulevard corridor, the plaza occupies a full commercial block across the level floor of the Los Angeles Basin between the rising terrain of Hollywood to the north and the lower watershed extending south toward Baldwin Hills. 6th Street runs east toward Downtown and west through the dense apartment districts of Central Los Angeles, placing the property along a continuous metropolitan corridor between the city center and the Westside. A deep internal court pulls activity away from the street frontage, with surrounding commercial wings enclosing an outdoor center distinct from the linear storefront pattern along nearby blocks. Low rooflines keep the complex beneath the residential towers and office buildings that now define much of Koreatown, preserving an unusually horizontal opening within one of Los Angeles's densest districts. The result is a compact commercial compound whose enclosed court and low-rise form create a powerful spatial counterpoint to the vertical city that grew around it.

What you should know about Chapman Plaza.

Chapman Plaza is best known for opening as Chapman Park Market in 1929 as one of the earliest western American markets conceived around automobile access. Chapman Brothers Company commissioned Morgan, Walls & Clements for a shop-and-market building wrapping a central drive-in patio, with Herbert Baruch handling construction. Stiles O. Clements shaped the Spanish Colonial Revival composition through thick concrete walls finished to resemble sandstone, Italian clay tile roofing, wrought iron, arched openings and elaborate Churrigueresque ornament. Motorists entered through a Spanish Revival arch and parked inside the market court, placing automobiles at the center of the shopping plan during an era when conventional commercial streets remained oriented toward pedestrians and streetcars. The original complex contained 28 individual marts, a post office and refrigerated rooms available to food merchants. A 500-car parking area supplemented the internal court, supporting customers arriving from affluent residential districts including Hancock Park, Windsor Square and Fremont Place. The market belonged to a larger Chapman development that included the companion Chapman Park Studio Building across Alexandria Avenue and the Chapman Park Hotel, later demolished during the 1960s. Los Angeles designated the market Historic-Cultural Monument 386 on August 30, 1988, recognizing an architectural survivor from the period when automobile ownership began reorganizing the city's commercial geography.

Developer Wayne Ratkovich subsequently acquired the deteriorated property and worked with architect Brenda Levin on an $11 million rehabilitation completed 1990. The undertaking stripped much of the complex to its shell, repaired intricate exterior ornament and restored the internal court as the organizing center of the property. Levin retained automobiles inside the court, preserving the founding circulation concept as new restaurants, cafés and neighborhood businesses occupied the rehabilitated wings. Commercial difficulties followed the 1992 civil unrest and regional economic downturn, and Ratkovich eventually sold the property after his initial tenants struggled. Developer Young Huh later divided the complex among 15 tenants and leased numerous spaces to Korean American businesses, redirecting its commercial life toward the surrounding community. By 2000, Chapman Plaza had become a prominent gathering place for younger Korean Americans, with coffeehouses and restaurants filling the courtyard deep into the evening. The property changed ownership again in 2016 when ArcWest Partners announced another refurbishment centered on historic exterior features and public areas. Nearly nine decades after the drive-in market opened, the same enclosed commercial form had absorbed successive economic and demographic eras, carrying an automobile-age retail experiment into the cultural center of contemporary Koreatown.

How to fold Chapman Plaza into your trip.

Chapman Plaza works as the anchor for a Central Los Angeles outing connecting a fortress-like modern church, the city's oldest continuous Protestant congregation and a domed synagogue whose construction drew heavily on early Hollywood patronage.

Begin at St. Basil Catholic Church, where A. C. Martin & Associates and Emmet L. Wemple created a Brutalist sanctuary from 12 angular concrete towers separated by narrow shafts of stained glass. Plans for the 40,000-square-foot church were set by August 1965 under Monsignor Henry Gross and Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, with the completed building solemnly opened on June 26, 1969. Artist Claire Falkenstein designed its stained-glass assemblies, doors and gates, setting geometric pieces of colored glass into iron forms integrated with the concrete architecture. Continue to First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, founded in 1867 as the city's oldest Protestant congregation in continuous service and occupying its fifth home since 1932. James E. and David C. Allison designed the English Gothic Revival complex in reinforced concrete strengthened with more than 500 tons of steel, and its tower rises 157 feet above the Lafayette Park edge. Canadian artist Albert Gilles added three-inch-thick bronze sanctuary doors in 1946, with each thousand-pound door carrying scenes from the life of Christ. Conclude at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the third home of Congregation B'nai B'rith, founded in 1862 as Los Angeles's oldest Jewish congregation. A. M. Edelman, S. Tilden Norton and David C. Allison designed the octagonal sanctuary dedicated in June 1929, placing a 100-foot Byzantine dome 140 feet above Wilshire Boulevard. Jack, Harry and Abraham Warner donated Hugo Ballin's murals depicting 3,000 years of Jewish history, as Louis B. Mayer funded major stained-glass windows and Carl Laemmle funded bronze chandeliers; a $47.5 million restoration completed in 2013 repaired the dome, glazing, cast stone and Ballin murals. The progression moves from postwar concrete architecture integrated with Claire Falkenstein's sculptural glass through a Gothic Revival home for Los Angeles's oldest continuous Protestant congregation and culminates beneath a vast Byzantine dome financed and embellished through the city's formative motion-picture community.

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