By Michele Stueven
Los Angeles’ historic Jonathan Club is continuing the celebration from 2025 into 2026 to honor the 100th anniversary of its landmark Town Club building. They are celebrating the original 1925 building foundation, in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles
Founded in 1895, Jonathan Club was established by some of LA’s founding fathers as a modest social club. Members over the years have included LA Times publisher Harry Chandler, San Fernando Valley developer James Boon Lankershim, Tarzan writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Pepperdine, film pioneer Jesse Lasky, Buster Keaton and President Ronald Reagan.
From 1896 to 1905, the club was located on Spring Street above a tailor and a sporting goods store. Later, the club occupied the top two floors of the Pacific Electric Building, built by the club’s then-President and railroad magnate Henry Huntington, before breaking ground on its own dedicated headquarters in 1924. The Italianate building was designed by Schultze & Weaver, famous hotel architects of the 1920s who were also responsible for the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and the nearby Biltmore in Downtown LA. When the private members club began building its permanent home in 1925, Figueroa Street was just a dusty corridor. Once completed, it was the tallest building in Downtown LA.
By all official accounts, Jonathan Club was then a 12-story building, capped at 150 feet, the maximum height permitted by the city at the time. During the Prohibition era, the rooftop served as more than just a scenic outlook that reached to San Pedro. Legend has it that the room, now known as Sky Bar, could be sealed off at a moment’s notice, similar to the architect’s design at Biltmore just a year earlier, which featured its own false walls, secret passages and hideouts. New hidden rooms are still being discovered, like the camera room, which is filled with vintage camera equipment, and is now currently being restored.
Ernest Batchelder, decorative artist and pioneer of the California Arts and Crafts movement, was a member, and in 2023, when renovating the Sun Room, the team uncovered original Batchelder tiles, handcrafted in Pasadena at the turn of the 20th century, hidden for decades under layers of drywall.
The building, drenched in details, is also home to an extensive collection of plein air paintings of the California Impressionist School dating back to the 1860s, including rare works by Guy Rose and Joseph Kleitsch, hundreds of historical photographs that are exhibited throughout the Club’s main restaurant, and Peter O’Malley’s personal collection of Dodger memorabilia, photographs and books that are on display in the blue Dodger Room.
This Renaissance-style building features hand-painted ceilings by Vatican-trained painter Giovanni Smeraldi, intricate wood carvings by early Hollywood set designers, and a 5,000-volume library that has remained untouched since the 1920s. Smeraldi also painted Caltech’s Atheneum, the Blue Room at the White House, and New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Jonathan Club’s lobby floors were laid with pink Tennessee marble, which was meticulously restored in 1981 with marble from the same quarry as the original.
The entire fifth floor is dedicated to health and wellness facilities, featuring everything from squash and basketball courts to the original 1925 tiled swimming pool, reminiscent of a Turkish bath, along with a massive gym and spa services, including a yoga program. There’s also a Pilates studio, personal trainers, nutritionists, the only doubles squash court in the city, and a cutting-edge Med Spa offering LED light therapy, cryotherapy and a hyperbaric chamber. In 2010, the rooftop running track was replaced with a 2800-square-foot urban garden that produces more than 30 varieties of fruit and vegetables, all of which are used at the club’s two dining concepts and are used for educating culinary students.
In what was originally the sprawling game room, carved wooden gargoyles depicting playing cards, holding dice or simply watching on in amusement can still be found in the club’s main restaurant, where they used to watch over members playing dominoes, billiards and other parlor games. The building houses a functioning wood-paneled library and reading room unaltered since the building first opened a century ago, and a barbershop that uses chairs from the 1950s.
Originally a men’s club, the institution has evolved over the last century. In 1965, the club was charged with “anti-Negro” and “anti-Jew” bias. In 1975, the club did not admit women as members. Women, as guests, were limited to certain floors, dining rooms and entrances, but later policy changes allowed women to use the main elevator and lobby at the club. Members voted to admit women in 1987, and today has more than 650 female members, including Marta Fernandez, who served as club president in 2023-2024. The current Jonathan Club President is John Lino, the first person with AAPI ancestry to hold the position; Black members have included Donna Oldman and composer Clifford Lamb, and Andre Jackson is the General Manager of operations at the club’s sister location on the beach in Santa Monica.
Jonathan Club has come a long way since 1925 but still architecturally holds its nostalgia and charm, and they are proud to celebrate their renowned spot in Downtown Los Angeles.
Put our blurb about first appearing in LA Weekly but edited for SCLM
