Del Amo Center: The Beginnings

Old-timers in Torrance will tell you that Sam Levy, owner of Levy's Department Store in the old downtown area, was indirectly responsible for the building of Del Amo Center. Levy was approached by Sears, Roebuck & Com in the 1950s. Sears wanted to build a store in downtown Torrance, and Levy fought them tooth and nail. Unable to get a lease in their first choice location, Sears moved out to the oil-pump riddled, undeveloped area east of Hawthorne Blvd. Or so the story goes.

According to the Mall Hall of Fame blog, Del Amo was the 11th shopping mall in Los Angeles County. The caption to this picture (orginally from CSUDH) says

"A circa-1962 view of DEL AMO[pronounced "duh-lah-mow"] CENTER. Sears, the south anchor, faces the Hawthorne and Sepulveda Boulevards intersection seen in the fore-ground."

Duh-lah-mow?

Here's another shot. Broadway's (now Macy's) is the big 2-story on the right. Beyond it is Hawthorne Blvd. . . beyond that, nothing. Weird.

For the record, Jaime Del Amo (then President of Del Amo Estate Co. and adopted son of the Dominguez land grant family) joined the President of Broadway Hale Stores and the VP of Sears, Roebuck & Co. to announce--on March 19, 1957--that a shopping center called Del Amo would be built, at a cost of $40 million.

Not sure which of the bigwigs said it, but the project was called “the prototype for future shopping centers." For the first time in this area, according to the Los Angeles Times story, two large department stores were linked in a single project.