page_title: Barker Bros.
hierarchical_section_title: Barker Bros.
caption_attribution_description: English: Entrance to Barker Brothers Building, 818 W. 7th Street, Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #356.
context_page_description: Barker Bros. was a major Los Angeles-based retailer of furniture, home furnishings and housewares from 1880 until 1992.
  Obadiah Truax Barker had owned upholstery and mattress shops in Cincinnati, Ohio and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
  In 1880, was visiting Los Angeles on a trip from Colorado Springs to San José, Cal., and overheard an outraged Otto Müller at a horticultural exhibition complain about the high cost of furnishing his home from the only large furniture store in the city at the time. Barker approached Müller and together they founded a furniture shop on N. Spring Street near the Los Angeles Plaza, called Barker and Mueller.
  In 1880, Los Angeles was a town a population of 11,183, but the city started to experience tremendous growth: its population would increase tenfold in the next twenty years, and tenfold again, to over one million, in the 25 years after that.
  In 1883 Barker bought out Müller and went into partnership with W. S. Allen, and moved to the Central Business District at that time, into the Merced Abbott Building on Main Street. Barker bought out Allen that same year and the firm became O. T. Barker & Sons.
context_section_description: Barker Bros. was a major Los Angeles-based retailer of furniture, home furnishings and (for a time) housewares from 1880 until 1992.
  Obadiah Truax Barker had owned upholstery and mattress shops in Cincinnati, Ohio and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
  In 1880, was visiting Los Angeles on a trip from Colorado Springs to San José, Cal., and overheard an outraged Otto Müller at a horticultural exhibition complain about the high cost of furnishing his home from the only large furniture store in the city at the time. Barker approached Müller and together they founded a furniture shop on N. Spring Street near the Los Angeles Plaza, called Barker and Mueller. 
  In 1880, Los Angeles was a town a population of 11,183, but the city started to experience tremendous growth: its population would increase tenfold in the next twenty years, and tenfold again, to over one million, in the 25 years after that.
  In 1883 Barker bought out Müller and went into partnership with W. S. Allen, and moved to the Central Business District at that time, into the Merced Abbott Building on Main Street. Barker bought out Allen that same year and the firm became O. T. Barker & Sons.
  Later the store moved to 3rd & Spring streets at the Stimson Building, Los Angeles' first steel-frame building, where their rent of $1500 was ten times what they had paid on Main Street, a sign of the rapid growth of Los Angeles at the time. 
  Again they moved – the move was done overnight and widely reported – this time to the seven-story Van Nuys building at 716–738 S. Broadway, the area which is now known as the Historic Core, the part of Broadway that was the main commercial street of Los Angeles from around 1910 until World War Two.
caption: Entrance to former flagship on 7th Street, built 1926
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot G10", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2013:04:10 16:20:09", "Image ExifOffset": "216", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "818", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7514", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:04:10 13:49:09", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:04:10 13:49:09", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "2/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "1357/200", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3996", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2647", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "400000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "400000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[61/10, 61/2, 0/0, 0/0]", "EXIF LensModel": "6.1-30.5 mm"}