Sontag Drug Building

The Sontag Cut‐Rate Drug Company opened its first Southern California stores in 1929. The company hired the Los Angeles firm of Norstrom and Anderson in 1936 to build a new premier store on Wilshire Blvd. David Gebhard and Robert Winter described it in their guidebook on Los Angeles architecture as “one of the busiest buildings ever done in the Streamline Moderne idiom.” Sontag was acquired by United Drug, Inc., in 1944 and by 1946 had moved out of the building after which it was subdivided into multiple tenant spaces. The building is listed in the California Register of Historical Resources as a contributor to the proposed addition of the Miracle Mile Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places. The Art Deco Society of Los Angeles is leading a campaign to have it designated as a Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monument.

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Los Angeles, Los Angeles County
Photographers: Al Russell, Andrew Schmidt