Edgemar

Edgemar is a mixed-use shopping and cultural center located at 2415 to 2449 Main Street in Santa Monica, California. Designed by architect Frank Gehry and completed in 1988, the complex is a notable early example of adaptive reuse that integrates early 20th century industrial warehouses and a 1940s Art Deco office building with new construction. Conceived by developer Abby Sher as a piazza-like setting with a museum as its centerpiece, Edgemar pioneered a model of melding art with commerce to sustain cultural institutions. The project anchored the formation of the Santa Monica Museum of Art and remains a significant work in Gehry's portfolio, demonstrating his deconstructivist approach to commercial and cultural architecture.

The site's history began in 1908 when the Imperial Ice Company constructed an 8,000 square foot warehouse at the rear of its Main Street property, expanding with a 3,000 square foot open-truss addition in 1928. As mechanical refrigeration caused the ice business to decline in the 1940s, the Santa Monica Dairy Company, founded by Swiss immigrant Herman Michel, purchased the property for its egg-processing division. The company built an Art Deco office building along Main Street and repurposed the 1908 warehouse into an egg-candling room. Following a newspaper contest, the business was renamed Edgemar Farms, a term blending English and Spanish to mean the edge of the sea. In 1983, the Michel Brothers sold their company to Foremost Dairy and listed the property. In 1984, local artist Thomas Eatherton showed the warehouse, with its 25-foot ceilings and clerestory windows, to neighbor Abby Sher and suggested its use as a museum. Sher purchased the property in October 1984, retaining the Edgemar name. She envisioned a mixed-use development modeled on a Tuscan hill town piazza and selected Frank Gehry as the architect. The project required a Conditional Use Permit because the warehouses sat on a residentially zoned portion of the 50,000 square foot site. Despite resident concerns over parking, traffic, and noise, the project received city approval, with final approval granted on February 5, 1985, and construction completed in 1988. In 1997, 6,000 square feet of the museum space was converted into a theater center, and the remaining 2,000 square feet became artist lofts, designed by Koning Eizenberg Architecture. Ownership changed in 2007, though the focus on arts persisted until the museum relocated and rebranded as the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2018.

The cultural scope of Edgemar was defined by the Santa Monica Museum of Art (SMMOA), which occupied the retrofitted 1908 warehouse. Founded as a nonprofit in 1985 by Abby Sher, Thomas Eatherton, and associates, the museum served as the anchor tenant and the impetus for the entire development. Under the planning direction of curator Hal Glicksman and later director Thomas Rhodes, who served from 1988 to 1998, SMMOA focused on contemporary art exhibitions. The museum's programming was integrated into the commercial life of the complex, fulfilling Sher's vision of a European-style community hub where small restaurants, shops, and cultural elements fostered interaction between art and commerce. In addition to the museum, the complex originally housed the Gallery of Functional Art, expanding its scope to include decorative and utilitarian design.

The inaugural presentation at the Santa Monica Museum of Art was the exhibition Art in The Raw, which ran from July 21, 1988, through January 7, 1989, before the interior build-out of the museum was completed. This exhibition featured works by contemporary artists Michael Brewster, David Bunn, Meg Cranston, Daniel J. Martinez, Bryan Pezzone, Mineko Grimmer, Carl Stone, and May Sun. The museum's formal inaugural exhibition in the finished space, Bon Angeles, was organized in association with the Goethe Institute in the fall of 1989. Beyond the museum's program, the commercial tenants at opening included the first Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop west of Chicago.

Frank Gehry designed Edgemar between 1984 and 1988 as a composition of abstracted village elements arranged around a central courtyard. The design preserved the original 1908 bow-truss warehouse and the 1928 open-truss addition, while retaining only the front wall and Art Deco facade of the 1940s office building, facing its new northwest wall in green tile. New construction included a two-story building for retail and office use and a parking lot with one level of underground parking. Gehry utilized modest materials found on the original site, including galvanized metal sheeting, chain link, concrete, and stucco. The exterior circulation stairs are composed of chunky galvanized metal, and a double layer of chain-link fencing partially veils the lift-core, elevating a utilitarian element into sculpture. The complex is capped with three different tower elements that frame views of the sky and act as sculptural signifiers. A curved wall assists in drawing visitors into the central piazza, creating multiple sightlines between the built elements.