History of Santa Fe Art Colony

Named for its location on Santa Fe Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, the Santa Fe Art Colony houses 57 studio residences. The original brick portion of the complex was built in 1906 by entrepreneur C.B. Van Vorst and was used as a mattress factory until the 1940s. Train tracks were routed through the property alongside this original building in order to load and unload raw materials directly from freight cars. Additional buildings were added in the 1930s and '40s, and the site saw later incarnations as a robe factory and a carpet business. In 1988 the complex was renovated and developed into artists’ lofts by a group of partners led by Los Angeles art patron Marvin Zeidler through a Community Redevelopment Agency program.