Seeing Is Believing--but Not at This Site : Artist’s Trick of the Eye Draws Attention to Downtown Building

These days David Hart likes to stand on a street corner by his downtown office building and listen to what pedestrians are saying about its new decor. Most of the time, he says, they argue whether the painters on the scaffolding on the 4th Street side of the building are real.

They’re not. But, looking at them, you wouldn’t want to swear on that.

Reality and Illusion

Not only are the painters, the scaffolding stage, and their suspension ropes not real, neither is the architectural detail on the 4th Street side of the building between Olive and Hill streets. The ornamental facade of columns, arches and windows at the top of the building is painted on that side and only appears to wrap completely around from Olive to 4th. Those on the Olive Street side are real.

The illusion is created by an ageless artistic technique called trompe l’oeil (pronounced tromp loy ), in which artists paint murals that appear three-dimensional. Michelangelo used the trompe l’oeil technique in the Sistine Chapel.

In this case, the trompe l’oeil is on the north side of Hart’s 12-story Subway Terminal Building, one of downtown Los Angeles’ oldest buildings, completed in 1926 as the terminal for the Red Car trolleys.

It is the first architectural use of the trompe l’oeil technique on the exterior of a Los Angeles building.

Trompe l’oeil , means, simply, trick of the eye, and it is.

Looking up from the street, the 62 painted windows on the blocklong wall appear as real as the actual windows below. Six different colors of paint were used just for the windows, in order to make them appear to have solar film on them as the real ones do, to cut down the glare of sunlight. In total, the trompe l’oeil mural is 560 feet long and 28 feet high.

“I really ought to take a tape recorder and stand out on the corner,� Hart said during an interview last week in his 10th-floor office of the subway building. “People stand out there and argue about it. I heard one guy talking about how slow those guys up there painted.�

Hart said that most of the building’s tenants that he had had occasion to query were pleased with the just-finished trompe l’oeil .

Fake Painters

“We have some tenants in the building who are utterly oblivious, but most of them think it’s wonderful,� he said. “The other day, a guy in the elevator said to me, ‘Those painters are fake.’ And I said, ‘That’s right.’ �

Hart, 52, who bought the Subway Terminal Building in May, 1979, for $5.25 million with a silent partner, said that when he started out to have a face lift done of his building earlier this year, “we didn’t have this vision in mind.�

After two unsuccessful attempts by other architects to renovate the exterior of the building, Hart hired Los Angeles architect Brenda Levin, whose work includes the restored Pellissier Building, which houses the Wiltern Theater, the Art Deco Oviatt Building on South Olive Street, the Eastern Columbia Building and the Fine Arts Building on 7th Street.

Design Solution

“Brenda’s basic assignment was to enhance the appearance of the north side of the building,� Hart explained. “How do we tie it into the main building? Her design solution was perfect--to take the architectural detail and wrap it around. We were led to the trompe l’oeil technique through an architecture book that I had had for a long time.�

The book, which Hart keeps on a table in his office, is “An Architecture of Illusion,� by artist Richard Haas.

Through Levin and Los Angeles artist Terry Schoonhoven, Hart was put in touch with Jeff Greene of EverGreene Painting Studios Inc. in New York, who had previously collaborated with Haas on several trompe l’oeil projects in the East and Midwest.

Hart commissioned Greene to do the trompe l’oeil on the Subway Terminal Building for $75,000. It is the last phase of his $3-million renovation of the interior and exterior of the building.

“I think there is a better potential to create value in a well-chosen rehab than developing a new property from scratch,� Hart said.

The five-wing building was designed by architects Schultze & Weaver, the same ones who originally did the Biltmore Hotel and the Jonathan Club. The entire brick-sided building is being painted a light gray granite color to match the trompe l’oeil .

“It’s a lot more expensive than just painting it flat,� Hart said of the trompe l’oeil . “But it’s like commissioning a work of art.�

Greene designed the mural and sent four artists to paint it.

“Jeff designed it, making it work as an illusion,� Hart explained. “It took four painters, all classically trained artists, nine weeks to do it. And that was with all the rain. It takes artistic sense to do. And they have a lot of pride. They wanted to make it work.

“I was really impressed how much plotting there is to it. They did the basic design in the studio, then came out to scale it out.�

The artists used full-scale paper renderings of the design. Once in place the designs were perforated with an electric needle (called a pounce) that forced charcoal through the holes, transferring the drawing to the wall.

Hart explained that Greene uses a special silica-based mineral paint made in West Germany for his trompe l’oeils . “It has become the paint of choice where you really want long life,� he said. “It bonds with the masonry and doesn’t chip or peal. Supposedly you can wash it.�

Like an artist stepping back from his easel, the painters, said Hart, would work awhile, then go down to the street and look up to check their handiwork. “Stepping back for them was going down 12 floors and across the street,� he said with a grin. “The idea to put the stage with the painters up there was my wife Barbara’s,� Hart said. “She was only half-kidding, but I thought it was great. I ran it by Brenda and the artists, and they liked it too. The figures are life-size (there are two), six feet tall. What gets your attention is the workmen up there. When they finished, each of the four painters signed the footboard of the stage with their last names and the initial of their first names.�

When it was completed in 1926, the Subway Terminal Building was called the highest commercial office structure west of the Mississippi River, but today it is dwarfed by the downtown high-rise office towers around it.

When Hart bought the building in 1979, many people had forgotten it was there. “This is my first involvement downtown,� Hart said. “A friend had seen the building and suggested it to me. I saw it as a potentially attractive opportunity in funding a rehab project.�

Hart is now a director of the Los Angeles Central City Assn. and a member of the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Before buying the Subway Terminal Building, a Los Angeles Historical Cultural landmark since 1977, Hart had been involved in apartment properties in Orange County.

Former Air Force Pilot

A UCLA graduate and former Air Force pilot, Hart had been an importer of plywood, heading the international department for Evans Products Co., then the largest importer of tropical forest projects in the United States.

After that, he became president of a steamship company based in Long Beach, but sold his interest in the shipping company in 1974 and entered the real estate business.

“The building needed a lot of cosmetic work,� he said. “There were simply a lot of inconsistencies in the way things were done over the years. We put in modern, high-efficiency boilers, made sure it was up to (earthquake) code. And it was. The tracks (from the subway below) have been pulled up, and there’s only one block of tunnel remaining. It runs from Olive to Grand.�

The Subway Terminal Building has about 375,000 square feet of office space and currently is 70% rented.

Hart said that more people began to notice the Subway Building after four buildings to the south of it were demolished last summer. “After those buildings were dropped in August, all of a sudden this building just burst out,� he explained.

Mayor Tom Bradley has declared today “Subway Terminal Building Renaissance Day.� Hart will receive a city proclamation for the completion of his building and the trompe l’oeil, which, Bradley said, “has added a new dimension to the downtown skyline.�

Hart said that since the trompe l’oeil mural was completed he has had a lot of inquiries about it from other building owners. “I expect to see more of these in relatively short order,� he said. “I am happy to have been able to play a role with this building. There are a lot of wonderful renovations in the downtown area. There’s a tempo of activity that’s developing. So much has happened to downtown that it’s just irreversible.

“In a way,� Hart added, “we’re employing art as a marketing tool, having the project to add some personality and some character for the building. What’s fun is that it really has evolved into a nifty public work of art.�