Los Angeles, California, USA

Closed 1986

It belongs to a kind of halcyon time in my childhood memory. Leslie W.

Ohrbachs was a moderately-priced department store that was founded in New York in 1923. Ohrbachs expanded dramatically after World War II, and opened numerous branch locations including in Los Angeles. The store located at on the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Boulevard was originally built in 1962 for the U.S. branch of Japanese department chain store, Seibu, and was designed by Welton Becket and Associates. Orbachs operated here from 1964 to 1986 when Brenninkmeyer’s Amcena took over its parent company and announced the shuttering of all six California locations, as well as Ohrbach’s New York flagship. The building was later purchased by Robert E. Petersen, founder of Hot Rod and Motor Trend magazines, who, along with his wife, Margie, founded the Petersen Automotive Museum in it in 1994. The painting is based on an uncredited photograph on miraclemile.com.