Here’s photos and more details about the building’s rediscovered facade

Remember the Art Deco SST Records building we told you about in this week’s cover story? The one concealed under another facade, at least since the 1950s? Well, here’s some photos of that facade which I shot last night, and a little bit more information about it.

Developer Jan Van Dijs is handling the remodel of all three SST buildings–this one, which dates to 1923 and 1924, is merely the western-most of three in the complex. Van Dijs also restored the Art Deco Art Theatre on Fourth Street–but when he and a group of investors purchased this building, they had no idea of its history.

“Do you remember these buildings before?” Van Dijs asked in a recent interview. “You could drive by a thousand times and you just wouldn’t notice it, and it was because it had just a very flush facade.

“Everything was just very nondescript, just 1960s scabbed-on remodel. It was like stucco and metal and wood. It was almost built not to stand out, just to disappear in the background. And it it had just a singular facade–basically it read as all one plane, even though it was three buildings.”

Not any more. As I wrote in this week’s cover story, Van Dijs is working with architects from Long Beach’s Studio-111–which also worked on the Courtyard Lofts project, and the Art Exchange–to transform this into three buildings.

Each will have a separate visual identity, and they’ll be differentiated visually by a small courtyard and garden in front of the second building.

Ultimately, the complex is envisioned as becoming office units for the so-called creative class. As you can see, its remodel is proceeding apace.

This western-most building–opened in 1925 as Citron Furniture–hasn’t been seen like this at least since the 1950s, according to Redevelopment Agency Board member John Thomas, who researched the building’s past after its historic facade came to light.

Thomas and Van Dijs say its facade–with those tropical leaves waving up at the sky; with fan shapes below them; and with columns below the fans–is one of the most unique such designs in the area, and possibly one of Long Beach’s earliest Art Deco storefronts.

I’ll keep you updated as workers finish the restoration and get some color on this unique building.

Tags: architectural restoration, art deco, California, Citron Furniture, Jan van Dijs, John Thomas, Long Beach, Redevelopment Agency, Southern California, sst records, Studio-111, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas