§ 16.52.020. Cooper Arms Apartments.

Pursuant to the provisions of Chapter 2.63, and with the recommendation of the Planning Commission, the City Council designates the following building as an historical landmark in the City:

The Cooper Arms Apartments.

A.

Location, Description and Reasons for Designation. Long Beach entered upon the "million-dollar-a-month" building era in 1921. By 1923, that figure had doubled. That year construction commenced on the Cooper Arms Apartments, one of several skyscraper apartment houses that changed the skyline of Long Beach from a quiet village to that of a metropolitan City.

Located at 455 East Ocean Boulevard, the twelve-story own-your-own, comprising one hundred fifty (150) apartments, was built of reinforced concrete and tile upon a lot that measured one hundred by two hundred two feet (202'), allowing space for a garden that was the size of a regular City lot.

The property was owned by Larkin Cooper whose home and guest house once graced the present day site of the Fidelity Federal Plaza. Cooper gathered together the most prominent business figures of Long Beach to manage the Cooper Arms project. Among them, Nelson McCook, president and founder of the California National Bank; Colonel Walter J. Horne, partner in Van Lester & Horne, a real estate firm that developed downtown business blocks and residences; Vat Lester, Horne's partner whose successful real estate methods earned him the pseudonym "The Bungalow Merchant;" William Prisk, founder of the Independent Press Telegram; Dr. W. Harriman Jones, surgeon and Director of the City National Building Company, and many others.

Their goal was to build the most luxurious cooperative apartment house in Long Beach. Early testimonials indicate they succeeded, comparing the Cooper Arms to the Biltmore in downtown Los Angeles and the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena.

The project was the sixth cooperative apartment house in Long Beach. Prices ranged from three thousand eight hundred dollars ($3,800.00) to seventeen thousand dollars ($17,000.00) per unit. The complex offered its tenants a wide variety of amenities: A Spanish loggia, domed ballroom and solarium atop the roof including a glass enclosed cafe; imported Italian terraza floors in the lobby and drawing room/lounge; art deco paneling, bronze doors and a number of other fine interior architectural details which enhanced the lobby and hallways. The basement provided receiving and storage rooms with individual trunk rooms; showers, lockers, dressing rooms and baths for bathers; billiard, smoking and recreation rooms were provided as was a driveway for autos at the rear of the building.

Exterior architectural features such as curved casement windows, columned balconies and carved artstone scrolls along the roofline all contribute to the art deco styling of the 1920s, so prevalent to Long Beach.

The Cooper Arms' historic associations lie in its status as one of the first cooperative ventures in apartment house living in the West; its relationship to the prominent businessmen of the day, and its value as an example of 1920s architecture in both its outer facade and interior detailing. Its twelve-story facade, as noted earlier, played a significant part in the changing face of Long Beach. The building's early days were distinguished by a lifestyle that once thrived in Long Beach and which may one day return. In that regard, the Cooper Arms is unique.

The obvious care and sense of responsibility of the owners of this building, those persons who own their apartments, is reflected throughout the structure in its orderly appearance and in the exceedingly expensive effort now being undertaken to bring the building up to meet Long Beach building codes.

B.

General Guidelines and Standards for any Changes. The following guidelines and standards recommended by the Cultural Heritage Commission are adopted:

This twelve-story building is in remarkably fine condition. The building should remain intact, its interiors preserved, its first floor lounge/drawing room be carefully preserved to ensure the beautiful art deco decorations, and efforts be made to maintain the bronze elevator doors, marble floors, brass fittings and fixtures and graceful casement windows that are found throughout the interior building.

The garden already in good repair, should continue as a green area, since it is an outstanding feature of the building, almost an architectural detail in itself.

(Ord. C-5523 § 1, 1979)