The building was designed by Albert Walker and Percy Eisen, prominent Los Angeles architects of the day who were also behind the Fine Arts Building and the James Oviatt Building in L.A., the El Cortez Apartment Hotel in San Diego, and others.
The Art Deco flourishes of the Jazz Age were on proud display in the Breakers’ casual dining area, which featured red lacquer tables; jade-green walls; and drapes of green, black, and gold. The 500-seat main dining room, “The Hall of the Galleons,” took a sense of excess even further with murals depicting the Sea of Spain in the 14th century. The hotel featured a Turkish bath and an express elevator that carried guests in their bathing suits and robes directly down to a beach entrance. High above it all, dining and dancing went on from 8:30 p.m. till midnight at a roof garden called the Promenade Deck.
The building was also adorned with a big, illuminated “B” gleaming through the night. In 1928, just a year after he became the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic and was, for a time, possibly the most famous man in the world, Charles Lindbergh was flying blind after midnight through heavy fog when he is believed to have spotted the sign. It allowed him to make an emergency landing at a Long Beach airfield. He spent a short night at the Breakers before a huge crowd formed in the morning, waiting for him in the lobby. A banner headline in the Los Angeles Evening Express proclaimed, “‘Lindy’ Escapes L.A. Death Landing,” while the Breakers was quick to advertise itself as the hotel “Where Lindbergh Saw the Light.”
