Grass Room is perhaps our most distinctive event venue and features a flowing 6,000-square-foot site plan designed for live performances, private events, courtyard weddings, receptions, exhibitions and productions. The venue is fully amenitized, and we provide experienced, professional site management plus a commercial kitchen for client-selected catering teams.
Built in the 1920’s in an area that has long served as the city’s seafood market east of Downtown, the building has lived many lives in its century of use; it’s been a fish and oyster company, an ice cream factory, and a commercial site for everything from far east imports to marijuana cultivation. This quirky history subtly informed our re-invention of the space.
Courtyard at Sunset
Grass Room is located on Fourth Street in DTLA, just around the corner from Millwick, and directly across the street from Flora Chang. Unassuming from the outside, the venue is noticeable for its blue façade (which you’ll see on many buildings in the blossoming North Sea neighborhood) and its dramatic greenhouse roof line, a feature it shares with the adjacent Valentine, a sister space joined to Grass Room’s main structure. It’s a short distance from the restaurants, boutique hotels, cafes and clubs that are making DTLA the most exciting place in Los Angeles; we’re just blocks from the Broad and MOCA, the Fashion District, Little Tokyo and the Arts District.
Grass Room accommodates a range of performances and private events: whether you want a petite gathering for less than 50 or a live events and ceremonies plus reception for up to 150 seated guests, you can do either in this modular, scalable venue and the experience will feel proportional and comfortable. Grass Room’s maximum capacity is 200 guests.
Courtyard Ceremony
Grass Room is Green
In 2017 we collaborated with engineers, craftsmen and artists to completely redesign and refurbish the building that is now Grass Room. Part of our mission was to limit the environmental impact of reconstruction. We took many of the materials freed up from the downsizing—lumber, steel elements, stairwells, flooring, even windows—and repurposed them into ceilings, walls, paneling, furniture and decorative elements. In its rebuild, the structure has tripled its energy efficiency and rendered its groundwater permeability to 100%.
Horticultural greenhouse roofs open, close, shade and ventilate to provide passive lighting, cooling and heating by taking full advantage of southern California’s sunshine and ocean breezes. Efficient, state of the art electric, plumbing and mechanical systems minimize energy use throughout the year. Grass Room encourages and supports green events and can introduce clients to green planners, stylists and purveyors who use sustainable resources or employ sustainable practices.
Courtyard at Night
Greenhouse Courtyard
One enters Grass Room across a landscaped entry court, beneath an outsized, out-of-his-element blue whale – a mural designed and painted by Stacy Smith and Victor Henderson. From that moment on, you’re in a wholly unique environment defined by lush gardens, sun-lit rooms, rustic surfaces and site-specific artworks by local artists.
At the door, a passageway leads you through a secret jungle, past a hand made copper bar with an ever changing patina and then opens to a courtyard framed by 25-foot walls of roughly textured clay and wood, set on floors of reclaimed brick, salvaged from the original structure, and polished aggregate, and surrounded by flourishing gardens that wouldn’t be out of place in a Dr. Seuss storyboard. Crystal fountains, ceramic sea life and other artistic interventions abound. Look up through palm trees to discover “Pax Los Angeles” a billboard-sized mural of mythical Los Angeles, circa 1850, painted by Frohawk Two Feathers (Umar Rashid). All of this lies beneath a soaring 35-foot greenhouse roof with retractable shades and levered windows. The roof is automated and adjustable, rendering the courtyard serviceable for any ceremony in any weather – a versatile, virtual, rain-or-shine garden space.
LA River mural by Umar Rashid
Grass Room’s courtyard is an intimate setting for less than 75 guests and is scalable for seated live performances for up to 150 guests (on benches and patio sofas we’ve designed and built). DJ sound equipment, mixing board and lighting systems help transform this courtyard with softly lit palm trees beneath a night sky, the perfect environment for dancing and lounging.
Ocean Dining Room
Ocean Dining Room
Grass Room’s Courtyard flows into the Ocean Dining Room through 18-foot tall, uncommonly shaped archways built from the original building’s deconstructed bow truss ceilings and topped with stained glass. On the dining room’s original brick walls you’ll find handmade clay and seaweed murals (literal impressions of kelp fronds collected from the Santa Monica beach shoreline). Carved totemic sea creatures by Ivan Lee Mora oversee the space; the effect is a loosely aquatic, otherworldly setting.
The tables, which can hold up to 150 guests, are built from squared-off, tongue and groove floors salvaged from the original hotel, and paired with suave Italian leather chairs. This dining room is thoroughly versatile, suitable for elegant seated dinners and live performances ranging from as few as 35 to as many as 150 guests, and features a 16-foot cinema screen, lighting systems and mixing board for dining ambience, screenings and live events.
Ocean Dining Room
Dining Room Sea Creature Totems by Ivan Lee Mora
Back Alley Lounge
A series of doors in the Ocean Dining Room lead out to Grass Room’s Back Alley Lounge where guests can enjoy the night air and city lights while guessing the origin of architectural salvage curated in amongst the bamboo.
Back Alley Lounge
Grotto
Dive in and cool off at Grass Room’s Grotto, a bar and service area sculpted from clay and plaster to a cave-like effect, with copper and mirrored gold accents and ceramic sea life, fabricated by Josh Beckman and Ivan Mora.
Grotto Bar by Josh Beckman & Ivan Mora
Psychedelic Corduroy Make Out Room
A bonus room that can be appreciated in many ways.
Make Out Room
Madonna Suite
Madonna is Grass Room’s private lounge – a hideaway for performing artists, brides, grooms, VIPs and hosts, a plush hangout in decadent pinks and mauves, featuring hand-upholstered walls designed and stitched by Tony Brown.
Madonna Suite by Tony Brown
Site Plans
Grass Room Site Plan
Grass Room + Valentine Site Plan
