A Rare Look Inside Los Angeles’ Venerable Jonathan Club

In celebration of the building’s centennial, the L.A. Conservancy held tours in late January, the first time the general public had been invited to view the club’s stately interior. The 1925 Renaissance Revival building was designed by hotel architects Schultze & Weaver; they also created the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City and Los Angeles’ 1923 Biltmore Hotel—a close visual twin to the Jonathan Club. The L.A. Conservancy advocates for the preservation of architecture.

Entering through the Jonathan Club’s substantial front doors, an expansive lobby set with a high carved wood fireplace sweeps before you. The floors are laid with pink Tennessee marble, restored in 1981 with marble from the same quarry as the original.

Look up to the Italianate ceiling to view the 1920s work of Vatican-trained Giovanni Smeraldi. His intricate painted designs are found on the ceilings in the club’s major public rooms. Smeraldi also painted the Blue Room at the White House and New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

It doesn’t look like it, but the 12-story brick-and-stone Jonathan Club was built quickly, in just 15 months for $3 million, explained L.A. Conservancy program manager Alex Inshishian during a tour. The property originally had 250 hotel rooms (40 rooms today), and a private 450-vehicle garage, a first during the 1920s. Founded in 1895, the organization was originally located above a nearby tailor shop and a sporting goods store. Today, the club operates two locations, the second a beach club in Santa Monica.

The club is named after “Brother Jonathan,” an everyman figure popular during the Revolutionary War through the mid 19th century—a precursor to Uncle Sam.

During the past few decades, the Jonathan has returned to its origins, resurrecting its original logo and erasing modernizations, including drop ceilings that marred the building’s look.

Back in the lobby, Inshishian pointed to a corner where an elevator once existed, discreetly transporting women up to the “ladies lounge,” as clubs of this stature were reserved for men. A few blocks away, the California Club, built in 1930, followed suit.

“The saying goes, the California Club was for those who owned L.A., and the Jonathan Club was for those who ran it,” Inshishian said. Jonathan club members included celebrities, railroad tycoons and Supreme Court justices. Deals were struck amid its meeting rooms, including the one that brought the Dodgers baseball team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958. The building is also where UCLA and the Los Angeles Philharmonic were founded by the monied class of the day.

Besides being for men only, the club had other rules, including that phone calls were not to be taken in public places—easier before the advent of mobile phones. Today, phone calls are taken only in large wooden booths that once housed landline phones. And since scrolling on phones was not an option in earlier decades, a gaming room was essential, set with billiards and card tables. Vestiges of the room can be seen in the club’s main restaurant: gargoyles carved from wood that play cards, tumble dice, and gaze down at the mortals below.

The club’s large library is largely untouched since the 1920s with its fireplace and busts of Shakespeare, Hippocrates, Dante and Cicero created by Hollywood set designers.

The large Florentine lounge and adjacent dining room have high coffered ceilings and original chandeliers. Elsewhere, a barbershop features chairs from the 1950s (they’re in great shape), and there’s a sunroom and a rooftop event space with a thriving garden of herbs, fruits and vegetables used in the club restaurant.

The club’s wellness facilities (in a time before wellness became a buzz term) were on the fifth floor: Turkish baths, basketball courts and a swimming pool—filled with trout in the 1940s so members could fish from it, Inshishian said.

Los Angeles-based Tim Barber Architects began restoring the pool in 2013, sourcing original tile to recreate the mosaic flooring, wainscot and the pool’s border. The firm reconfigured blocked window bays into light boxes and also installed period-appropriate lighting, among other improvements.

On the rooftop, the firm created a new rooftop cigar lounge. Adjacent to that is the property’s unofficial 13th floor, a small room now known as the Sky Bar. According to club legend, the secretive space, which could be sealed off, was a convenient drinking spot during the Prohibition era.