The hook
Behind a plain brick front on a downtown corner is the most beautiful interior in Los Angeles, a five-story court of wrought iron and light most people walk right past.
01Why it's worth it
From the street the 1893 Bradbury looks like nothing. Step inside and the ceiling lifts away into a glass roof pouring light down onto open cage elevators, marble stairs, and tier after tier of French wrought-iron railing, all of it glowing. A gold-mining millionaire commissioned it, and the man who built it was a draftsman with almost no architecture experience who, the story goes, took the job after consulting his dead brother through a planchette, working from a utopian novel's vision of the buildings of the future. Whatever the truth of that, it worked, which is why the building has stood in on film for both the future and the past, most famously as the decaying apartment house in Blade Runner. It's a working office building, so you can only climb to the first landing, but the first landing is enough.
02How to experience it
It's at Third and Broadway downtown, about six hours from the Bay. Free, open in the daytime, with a staffer who'll tell you the history; casual visitors are held to the ground floor and first landing. Pair it with Grand Central Market across the street and the Last Bookstore a few blocks south.