New Life for the Bank of Italy Building?

By Eric Richardson
Published: Thursday, February 23, 2006, at 03:02PM

Bank of Italy Building Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — There are a few buildings Downtown that I’ve always been curious about. One of them is the building on the northwest corner of 7th and Olive – either the Bank of Italy building or Giannini, depending on where on the building you look.

It’s one of those cool old buildings that’s seemed to sit completely vacant. Definitely no ground floor life, and no visible signs of life above either.

Over the past few days there have been signs that that’s changing. I don’t know what the plans are (perhaps someone else is more in the know than I), but there’s definitely construction work going on inside. Windows are open, and walking back from lunch I saw a large puff of dust come out of the upper floors.



Comments

1
Scott Mercer writes:

I believe that it was originally the Bank of Italy. Don’t know when it was built. (circa 1920?) Then later the Bank of Italy became Bank of America. I believe it was renamed Gianini Square sometime in the 1980’s, after BofA moved out. It was named after the founder of the Bank of Italy

# on Feb.24.2006 AT 04:13 AM

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