Trimmings

Dutch Chocolate Shop Restoring Downtown Marvel

Tilework by Ernest Batchelder
Tilework by Ernest Batchelder Photo: Countdown to Batchelder

Curbed LA revisits Downtown’s intricately detailed lair of vaulted ceilings and Dutch murals made of tile by artist Ernest Bachelder that once served as The Chocolate Shoppe, a planned chain of soda fountains that breathed its first and last breaths at this site that served as a setting in a Dorothy Gish film and was eventually turned into a recent restaurant named Finney’s and later remained in shadows behind a Metro PCS store. The space, a historic-cultural monument, is currently being restored by a business called The Dutch Chocolate Shop, with the intention of turning this into a home-base for the confectioner, who recently brought its wares to the Holland Festival in Long Beach.

Restoring and preserving this kind of beauty and too often forgotten history surely exemplifies the best of what Downtown’s booming revival should and could be all about. Coming to 217 W 6th St. [Curbed; BOL]

Dutch Chocolate Shop Restoring Downtown Marvel