Commercial Exchange Building
building in Los Angeles, California, United States
The Freehand Los Angeles Hotel, formerly the Commercial Exchange Building, is a historic structure in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Location
The building is located on the corner of Olive Street and 8th Street in Downtown Los Angeles, California.
History
The 13-story building was completed in 1924. It was designed by the architecture firm of Walker and Eisen. The building has the distinction of having been vertically split to permit widening of Olive Street. The building's exterior also holds one of the tallest neon signs in Los Angeles.
To allow the widening of Olive Street in the mid-1930s, a "10-foot slice" was removed from the center of the Commercial Exchange Building and engineers rejoined the remaining halves by sliding the western portion eastward. Total cost of the removal and realignment was $60,000, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1935.
Edgar Rice Burroughs operated his publishing company from offices in the Commercial Exchange Building. The structure also once housed the offices of Owl Drug Company.
“Commercial Exchange Building” enters the record as building in Los Angeles, California, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Commercial, Exchange and Building can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Commercial Exchange Building” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Commercial, Exchange and Building provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5152491. Authority coordinates are 34.045, -118.257. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924 and 1935.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Commercial Exchange Building”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Commercial Exchange Building primary sources, Commercial Exchange Building archive and Commercial research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Commercial Exchange Building”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Commercial Exchange Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.