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An 1893 downtown LA landmark designed after its architect consulted a dead brother via planchette — a janitor died in the freight elevator shaft in 1908
304 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Ground floor and lower atrium are publicly accessible on weekdays during business hours. Upper floors are private offices.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Ground floor atrium accessible. Ornamental cage elevators are not ADA-compliant; stairs required for upper floors.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1893 · National Historic Landmark · George Wyman planchette origin story · Carl King death 1908 · Blade Runner filming location
Mining millionaire Lewis Bradbury commissioned the building in 1892, initially approaching architect Sumner Hunt, whose design Bradbury rejected. He then turned to George Wyman, an amateur draftsman with no formal architectural training. According to an account recorded by Wyman's family, Wyman was reluctant to take the commission until his deceased brother Mark communicated encouragement via planchette, citing Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward, which described a futuristic office building filled with light. Wyman accepted the commission, and the building he designed has been regarded as architecturally extraordinary ever since.
The Bradbury Building opened in 1893. Its five-story atrium is capped by a glazed skylight supported by ornamental ironwork manufactured in France; open iron cage elevators run the full height of the atrium; glazed brick lines the interior walls; and a wraparound balcony system at each level looks inward to the central light court. The structure was intended as an office building and commercial address, and it served as such through the 20th century.
On November 9, 1908, janitor Carl King was found dead at the base of the building's freight elevator shaft. The official cause of death was recorded as a crushed skull consistent with a fall, but the circumstances — whether accident, misadventure, or otherwise — were not fully established in available records from the period.
The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977. It has appeared in numerous films, most famously as a location in Blade Runner (1982) and the 1950 noir film D.O.A. The Los Angeles Conservancy lists it among the most significant historic commercial structures in Southern California. Upper floors operate as private offices; the ground floor and atrium are public during weekday business hours.
Sources
The Bradbury Building's paranormal reputation begins before the first ghost was ever reported: the story of George Wyman consulting his deceased brother Mark via planchette before accepting the commission has circulated since at least the early 20th century, and it gives the building an unusual status in LA's haunted-places geography — a structure whose origins are themselves supernatural in the standard account.
The account of the planchette session was preserved in Wyman family oral tradition and has been repeated in architectural histories of the building. Wyman reportedly wrote in his diary that his brother's message cited the fictional office building in Looking Backward as a model for what the Bradbury should become. The story cannot be independently verified from contemporaneous documentation, but it is old enough to predate the modern paranormal tourism industry and its incentives.
Janitor Carl King's 1908 death at the base of the freight elevator shaft is the building's documented dark event. Security staff and custodial workers in subsequent decades reported the elevators moving between floors with no passengers aboard — a phenomenon they consistently attributed to King. More recent accounts from building tenants and evening security describe footsteps in the upper corridors after staff have gone home, and lights that flicker in patterned sequences in sections of the building that building management has inspected without finding electrical cause.
Paranormal investigators who have conducted sessions in the atrium and elevator corridors describe a concentrated sense of unease near the freight elevator's location. The building's physical environment — the five-story open atrium, the echoing ironwork, the way sound travels through the light court — creates acoustic conditions that probably amplify ordinary sounds into the uncanny. That does not settle the question, but it is part of the picture.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
The Bradbury Building's ground floor and lower atrium — with its ornamental iron railings, glazed brick, and five-story light court — are accessible to the public on weekdays during business hours. The freight elevator shaft where janitor Carl King was found dead in 1908 is structural, not on display, but the building's general layout is visible from the atrium floor. Visitors are asked not to access upper floors.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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