National Cash Register Company Sales and Repair Building
1011 Olive Street Street
Built: 1913
Architect: Thomas Curtis Lee

A small two-story commercial building, all too rare in downtown today, sandwiched between two taller buildings. A simple building with matching cornices at first and second floor ceiling levels, supported by two elegant brackets.

1011 Olive was built as a sales and repair location for the National Cash Register Company, the country's leading cash register manufacturer. NCR essentially created both the cash register machine and the market for it, and used a variety of overtly strong-arm tactics to destroy - literally - any potential competitors. Tactics listed in the National Register nomination for 1011 Olive include assaulting competitors' salesmen, opening offices next to their salesrooms with overtly hostile advertising, and creating knock-offs of competitors' products to sell at drasticly undercut prices. NCR would go on to lead the cash register market for most of the 20th century, but moved out of this location in 1933.

In 1935, a bar opened in the building, and would go on to become downtown's longest-running tavern. Pat Bussone's Wine & Spirits, and the integral LA Coney Island Restaurant, was a combined bar/package liquor/lunch counter/restaurant, an old-school dimly lit smokey dive, until its closing circa 2012.

1011 Olive Street was acquired by the Baileys' Restaurants family in 2014, with plans to open a barbeque restaurant with a roof terrace in 2015.

Locator Map

1011 Olive is at the low end of a wide and healthy mix of building scales in this section of downtown - ranging its diminutive two stories up to the huge block-wide Syndicate Trust.