Lemons, Nuance, Perception, and Bullock's Wilshire

Bullocks Wilshire in its heyday in the 1920’s.

“I like the color of the dried lemons.  I want the dried ones back.”

I collected fresh lemons from our garden, took them to our house-bound neighbor, and placed them in her Chinese export bowls as an act of kindness, thinking the bright yellow hue would refresh her dark house in lieu of the dried ones they replaced. I was about 12 years old. The lemons and that house made a huge impression on me. They belonged to Mrs. Jeffine, a retired window dresser from the great Los Angeles department store, Bullocks Wilshire, one of the finest examples of art deco in the world and, in its heyday, chic in the purest and un-varnished definition of the word.

A ceiling mosaic in the main entrance.

I once toured the building with my mother. She had been there the week it opened in 1929. She pointed out the trains, planes, and dirigible in the mosaic on the ceiling of the porte-cochere, the play deck where children could be left with the attendants while their mother’s shopped, and the fantastic ornaments often specific to department stores—I always remember the men’s department with an inlaid wooden frieze of polo players.

A ceiling mosaic in the main entrance.

The old Bullocks aesthetic was very much a part of Mrs. Jeffine’s own interior. The redwood house from the 1930’s with modern lines had a single gable centered large room painted a shade of "Ashes of Roses." The polished-concrete floors had a slight lavender tint, and looked upon a California canyon filled with grey chaparral and a modernist tea pavilion painted Chinese red that centered the view. On the walls, surplus from one of her store windows, were grainy photo blow ups of lowcountry landscapes at dawn, tinted in pink and blue.

The Wilshire Boulevard side of Bullocks Wilshire today.

The furniture was the best modern mix of the 1940’s. There were several Jean Michel Frank-esque club chairs, a set of Biedermeier dining chairs, a plain table, and for sculpture, pieces from a Victorian Rococo Revival Corset back parlor suite.

 
Once a private viewing room, now a meeting room; the Tea Room after a recent renovation.

On the table was the bowl with the dried lemons. In hindsight, from her strong request to return the old fruit, I better understood her nuance of color and arrangement. The bright yellow was out of place in her well modulated and carefully toned world. To this day, she leads me to look and listen more carefully. “I like the color of dried lemons. I want the dried ones back.”

Note: The Bullocks Wilshire building is now part of Southwestern Law School, which undertook a full restoration of the structure from 1997 to 2004. They did a beautiful job and should be commended for the adaptive-use approach they took.