A tale of two buildings

To judge from its exuberant façade, the new Versailles apartment building in Koreatown (one of at least three apartment houses with this classy-sounding name in Los Angeles) has all the right stuff: a throwback to the great French-inspired postwar buildings of Leland Bryant, complete with turrets, balconies, peaked roofs and, most important, a sense of play and fantasy.

The Versailles, Koreatown

The interior, however, tells a different—and disappointing—story. So-called "bedrooms" in this massive block-long building (S. Oxford between James M. Wood Blvd. and San Marino) are the size of closets.

Good luck opening that bottom drawer!

The dining room doubles as the apartment entryway (of course) and the cool turrets are non-functional paste-ons with blind windows (couldn't they have been closets, at least?).

Dining table in the entryway, useless turrets.

The worst may be the living rooms, which are cramped and miserly in size.

A living room at the Versailles, Koreatown.

Just down the street, at 900 South Serrano, is the St. Germaine, a thrilling 1929 Leland Bryant building (an obvious model for the Versailles) with generous living spaces, including spacious living rooms, real dining rooms, and full-sized bedrooms. And the turrets are functional interior spaces, with real windows that admit more light into the apartments.

The St. Germaine, Leland Bryant architect (1929).

Interior of the St. Germaine: generous living spaces and a functioning turret room.

A real, adult-size bedroom at the St. Germaine.

There is much to be admired about the projects of Frost/Chaddock, the developers of the Versailles, but they should be ashamed of their avarice in trying to squeeze as many residents as possible into this new building at the expense of quality of life.