Downtown LA's historic office buildings, once abandoned, are again drawing tenants
LOS ANGELES - Just over a century ago, Hulett C. Merritt built an imposing white edifice on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles meant to reflect his stature as one of California's richest, most successful businessmen.
It was a nine-story office tower designed to evoke the ancient Roman temple of Minerva, clad in exquisite white marble from the same Colorado quarry that supplied stone for the Lincoln Memorial being erected at the time in Washington.
Today, the long-vacant Merritt Building is covered in dark soot and graffiti, a lingering eyesore in a neighborhood on the mend. Its new owners, however, have begun a full-scale makeover to restore it to life as an upscale office building - an unusual but increasingly common decision among landlords in the city's downtown Historic Core.
In a trend that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago,
