California Market Center from “Cruel Intentions”

For such a quintessentially “New York” movie, quite a lot of Cruel Intentions was shot in L.A., which I’m only just now discovering.  A few of the more prominent West Coast locales include the modern pad where Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson) lived (it’s actually the Benton House in Brentwood), the Rosemont Estate’s ornate indoor pool (that can be found at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles), Penn Station (downtown L.A.’s 7th Street/Metro Center Station in real life), and, as I recently learned thanks to my friend Owen (of the When Write Is Wrong blog), the office of Sebastian Valmont’s (Ryan Phillipe) therapist, Dr. Greenbaum (Swoosie Kurtz), which is really California Market Center, also in downtown L.A.  I headed right on out to stalk the site on a sunny Saturday morning shortly after Owen told me about it in June, but what I did not realize is that the wholesale fashion mart is closed on weekends.  So that particular mission was thwarted.  I wasn’t able to re-stalk the place until mid-September and, this time, I made sure to hit it up on a weekday.

The California Mart, as it was initially called, was established by New York lingerie manufacturers Harvey and Barney Morse.  Upon moving to L.A. and working the SoCal fashion trade in the 1930s, the brothers discovered there was a need for a centralized spot where retailers could look for and secure merchandise.  As Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum explain in their 2000 book Behind the Label, “Buyers would come to Los Angeles with their checkbooks in hand, yet wind up spending days wandering through the sprawling Los Angeles basis in a sometimes futile search for suitable manufacturers.  The Morse brothers saw an opportunity.”  The duo purchased a plot of land for their new marketplace on East 9th and South Los Angeles Streets in 1952 and the complex’s first building was completed in 1963.

The mart’s second building was constructed in 1965 and the third in 1979.  All three were designed by the Victor Gruen Associates architecture firm.

The result of their efforts is a sprawling 1.8-million-square-foot marketplace that the L.A. Times dubbed “the heartbeat of the Los Angeles apparel industry” in 1987.

The Morse family continued to own the California Mart until 1994 when it was lost to foreclosure.  The site was soon snapped up by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, who set about refurbishing the interior and increasing tenancy.  In 2000, Equitable Life sold to Hertz Investment Group for a cool $90 million.  Though the company renamed the vast plaza “California Market Center,” many still refer to it by its original moniker.

In 2005, the complex was acquired for $135 million by Jamison Realty Inc.  They subsequently sold it last June for a whopping $440 million to New York-based real estate company Brookfield, who are planning to renovate the space and make it more publicly accessible.  (Perhaps keeping it open on weekends might be a good start.  )  Bert Dezzutti, the head of Brookfield’s Western region, recently told the Los Angeles Times, “We want to open it up literally and figuratively to the street and to pedestrian flow to invite people into space that is somewhat blocked off and difficult to access now.”  I really hope their punch list doesn’t include altering the market’s fabulous lobby.

The gorgeous atrium-like space . . .

. . . is capped by a magnificent glass ceiling that is not only stunning to look at, but allows copious natural light to flow in and provides beautiful views of the mart’s three modernist-style buildings.

The 13-story complex currently houses numerous meeting venues and event spaces, more than 1,200 apparel showrooms, a theatre, a print shop, a food court, a fashion school (Otis College of Art and Design), a bank, a large parking garage, and some of the nicest public restrooms in all of downtown.

You can check out some more photographs of the market here.

Cruel Intentions made spectacular use of the complex’s lobby.

It is there that, in the 1999 drama’s opening scene, Sebastian leaves his latest therapy session just seconds before Dr. Greenbaum learns that he has not only seduced her daughter, Marci (a pre-American Pie Tara Reid), but has posted nude photographs of her online.

Dr. Greenbaum catches up with Sebastian in the market’s atrium and proceeds to scream at him from the second floor.

In typical Sebastian fashion, while Dr. Greenbaum is ranting and raving, he meets a cute girl and informs her that he is taking her to lunch.

The California Market Center lobby looks exactly the same today as it did onscreen 19 years ago.  To say I was ecstatic to finally be seeing it in person is an understatement.  And while I was a bit nervous that the powers that be would yell at me for taking photographs of the space, I am happy to report that all of the security guards and employees I spoke with could not have been nicer.

As Owen later discovered and informed me, an actual CA Market Center suite was also used in the scene as the interior of Dr. Greenbaum’s office.

As you can see in the screen capture as compared to the Google aerial image of the buildings located just north of the complex (both of which are pictured below), the view from the doctor’s windows match that of the actual mart.

California Market Center also popped up in the Season 4 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “The Groupie,” which aired in 1978, as the spot where Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) went undercover as a swimsuit buyer and a fashion photographer, respectively.

The mart’s real life interior also appeared in the episode, but it looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen 39 years ago.

Stay tuned on Monday, folks, for the start of my annual Haunted Hollywood postings!  I can’t wait!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: California Market Center, aka Sebastian’s therapist’s office from Cruel Intentions, is located at 110 East 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles.  You can visit the center’s official website here.  The property is only open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., so plan accordingly.

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