The Capitol Records Tower was built to make state-of-the-art recording studios as well as a single location for the various divisions of Capitol Records that, due to space limitations, were located in various rented offices in buildings on Vine Street between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards.
The Capitol Records Tower was initially designed in 1954 by Louis Naidorf for Welton Becket & Associates. The initial design included a restaurant on the roof. The design was altered due to a 13 story height limit imposed by the city which was lifted soon after the Tower was completed. Ground breaking was held September 27, 1954. The ceremony was emceed by Don Wilson, who was Jack Benny's announcer and also recorded childrens records for Capitol. In attendance along with Capitol co-founder and then president Glenn Wallichs were Capitol staff members, recording artists and Los Angeles politicians as well as fellow co-founder Johnny Mercer and Mrs. Marie Wallace DeSylva, widow of Capitol's third founder Buddy DeSylva.
The first parts of the tower built were the underground echo chambers. They are 25 feet under what is now Capitol's parking lot and would define part of the Capitol sound for decades. The concrete-walled chambers float on, and are insulated by, a cork and asphalt mixture. Sound is sent down to speakers in the chambers and sent back via microphone to the studio. They are still in use today. Via high speed internet connection and rented time, anyone can send sound to them, getting the results back in almost real time. The entryway to the chambers is a metal hatch in the floor of the boiler room. When the hatch is opened, you have to go down metal rungs in the wall to get to a low and small hallway that goes to the central core where the speakers and microphones can be accessed. A copy of the final blueprints, which indicate the locations of the various offices when the Tower first opened, is located in building maintaince office on the ground floor.
Before the tower was completed, Capitol was bought by the UK firm EMI.
As noted earlier, before the Tower's official opening, Studio B was used on February 22, 1956 by Frank Sinatra conducting an orchestra for his only instrumental album "Tone Poems of Color". Some great black & white photos of the session taken by Ken Veeder can be seen at http://www.mptv.net using the search words Veeder Capitol Studio Microphone 1956. The photos to look for are the ones with Sinatra wearing a sweater. One of the images was later used as reference for the painting on the cover of Sintara's "Where Are You?" album.
The official opening ceremony was held April 6, 1956. KTLA newscaster Stan Chambers hosted a live telecast of the event which was also emceed on radio by reporter Johnny Grant who is now the honorary mayor of Hollywood and emcee for every installation of a new star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Samuel Morse's granddaughter Leila, who lived only 4 blocks away, flipped the switch to light the red beacon on top of the 82 foot trilon spire. The beacon spelt out Hollywood in Morse Code. The beacon light's control box, which has only been updated twice, is located on the roof. The roof can be accessed via a staircase from the 13th floor, which, to avoid bad luck, is called the "E" floor since it contains the president's office and offices for EMI. Also on the "E" floor is a large painted copy of "His Master's Voice" which is EMI's traditional logo.
Initally, all of Capitol's offices didn't fill the tower so a few floors were rented out until the 1960s. The Tower's most notable other tenant was the estate of Hedda Hopper - Hollywood gossip columnist, actress, and mother of Willam Hopper (who played Paul Drake on the classic Perry Mason television series).