Fleetwood Center
Could there be any better expression of Southern California’s car-centric culture than the programmatic architecture of the Fleetwood Center on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana? The two-story retail/office building, inspired by the early 1970s Cadillac Fleetwood, was designed in 1986 by Lee Oakes, then of the architectural firm Matlin-Dvoretsky, for developers CBS Realcorp. Oakes arranged the central windows to be the radiator grille, neon tubing for headlights set against a background of glass bricks, and neon stretched around angular stucco turrets for the turn signals on the fenders. Originally, the building was, of course, painted pink. In a 1987 Los Angeles Times article, Oakes admitted the style was outside his usual purview: “Very rarely do I have creative impulses like this. I was just walking around and saw this Cadillac grille. It just clicked.”
Tarzana, Los Angeles County
Photographer: Lonny Ross