Eastern Columbia Building

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The bustling scene on S. Broadway, as seen from just north of 9th Street (center). Visible are various businesses, billboards, the United Artists Theatre, and the Eastern Columbia Building. Photograph dated May 31, 1951. Eastern Building, known also as Eastern Columbia Building, and located at 849 S. Broadway, is strikingly covered with green terra-cotta on the entire exterior of the building. It has a clock tower and is designed in Art Deco Moderne stepped-back style by architect Claude Beelman. Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin financed the United Artists Theatre/Texaco Building located at 933 S. Broadway, which was completed in 1927 by architects Percy A. Walker & Albert R. Eisen with interior design by C. Howard Crane. The Spanish Gothic style building included an ornate 50-foot high "dummy tower" to circumvent the local height restriction of the time, and all of the offices were leased to the California Petroleum Co.