A new building for a new age
Sargent died in 1929, and to ensure that the company’s reputation did not die with him, his successor, A. F. Morlan, and the Board of Directors decided to erect a large new corporate headquarters as a monument to the company’s success. They needed the building to convey their historic strength and the stability of the company while also positioning the company on the cutting edge of Los Angeles’ development, signaling to its potential clients and investors that it was both a part of the city’s small town past and its metropolitan future. There also were practical reasons for expanding the company’s offices: they needed to house the over one million title files held by the company, documents related to virtually every parcel of land in Los Angeles county since the establishment of the American government in 1850s. Among the documents were a “Book of Disenos” (a survey of Mexican land grants) and records of the acts of the Mexican Ayuntamiento (Council) that preceded the American government, critical to authenticating land claims from the days of Spanish and Mexican rule. The documents held by the company served as the mechanism through which American understandings of property rights and land ownership had been realized in the region, “guaranteeing” not only individual land claims but also Anglo-American hegemony in Southern California more broadly. The new building thereby would serve not only as a monument to the company’s strength, but also to the strength and vitality of the real estate industry and the city of Los Angeles itself. 


The company enlisted the father-son team of John B. and Donald D. Parkinson to design an “ultra-modern” building with over 130,000 square feet of office space on a lot they had purchased on Pershing Square, just blocks from the Superior Court and the newly opened City Hall. The elder Parkinson had made his name in the architecture world when he designed the city’s first “sky scraper” at Fourth and Spring Streets in 1904 (now known as the Continental Building), prompting the City Council to pass an ordinance limiting the height of new construction projects to 150 feet.

To maneuver around the ordinance’s height restrictions, the Parkinson firm designed an elaborate decorative feature on the roof of the Title building, leaving floors twelve and above unoccupied so as to extend the height of the building to 240 feet. The Gothic-style rooftop had multiple-tiered buttresses and towers that echoed the medieval cathedrals of Europe and contributed to the building’s vertical thrust. A high-tech system of floodlights was added so that the building became even more spectacular at night. The terra cotta tiles on the exterior of the building were specially finished with a texture that accentuated the lighting effect and, along with recessed windows, added to the upward thrust and verticality of the building. The building also was outfitted with the most state-of-the-art amenities, including an electrical ventilation system and four high-speed elevators.⁸ By adapting traditional forms and techniques using modern technologies, the Parkinsons created a structure that elegantly advanced the company’s needs. 

Ballin depicts a long view of LA history
The Parkinsons hired Eugene Maier-Krieg to sculpt decorative features on the building’s exterior and Hugo Ballin to paint a series of murals for the building's lobby. To further enhance the company’s mission, Ballin designed a series of six panels tracing Los Angeles’ history from prehistoric times to its “modern” present (in 1930), situating the company and the documents held in its headquarters within the city's historical narrative. In each panel, Ballin underscored the legitimacy of the titles held at the building and the positive, modernizing effects that Anglo American rule had on the region. One panel romanticized the days of “rancho” life as a time when Spanish padres and colonists co-mingled with the indigenous population and two panels portrayed the transition to American rule as peaceful, rational and orderly. The coming of the railroad is similarly touted as having “ended the isolation of the pueblo” and the “modern era” embodied by a dynamic, male figure surrounded by props signifying the technological achievements that enabled the city’s growth. Rather than employ idealized, female figures as allegorical symbols as he had in previous commissions, in the Title murals Ballin used hyper-masculine forms, emphasizing their physicality and strength to capture rapid changes occurring in Los Angeles’ economy, population and culture at the time. By abandoning his “virgins” in favor of “dynamos,” Ballin was able to match the “ultra-modern” aesthetics of the building without straying too far from his traditional, classical style. And by adding “dynamos” to his historical motif, his murals both reinforced the Title Guarantee and Trust Company’s role in the history of the city and positioned it at the forefront of the city’s development in the future.

The legacy of Title Guarantee
Despite the permanency of the structure, the Title Guarantee and Trust company did not last: it first merged with the Title Insurance and Trust Company, was then taken over by a Chicago firm, and its millions of titles are now held by the Fidelity Insurance Company. The Title Guarantee building, however, has remained, and has been recognized by both the National Register of Historic Places and the Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monuments for its significance to the city’s architectural heritage, ensuring that the building and Ballin’s murals will be part of the downtown landscape for years to come. They were cleaned as part of the building's renovation in 2013-2014, and can be viewed by contacting the Title Guarantee Management Company.