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Seeing City Hall With New Eyes
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| City Hall as it appeared in 1928. The top was designed to resemble the mausoleum at Halicarnassus. |
L.A. Power Structure Is More Than the 'Daily Planet' Headquarters
by Michelle Gubbay
Rambling around Downtown is a never-ending delight because there is always something new to see. Of course the "new" is often the old, the taken-for-granted seen with open eyes.
There is perhaps nothing more taken-for-granted in Downtown than City Hall. While notations that City Hall is "L.A.'s most recognizable landmark" are outdated (harking back to the days when it served as the location for the Daily Planet in the "Superman" TV series), City Hall is certainly well known to all who live or work in the vicinity.
Like most Downtowners, I was aware that City Hall, completed in 1928, underwent major restoration and seismic renovation in the 1990s; the work - $300 million worth - was finished in 2001. I was also aware that the main interior feature is a central rotunda, and that the observation deck at the top, with its commanding city views, was recently reopened to the public.
Yet, although I've attended rallies through the years on the lawn and steps of the First Street entrance, and enjoyed an imaginative performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar staged on the Spring Street steps, other than a brief foray to the city finance office I'd never been inside City Hall. I decided to take the L.A. Conservancy tour on a recent Saturday morning.
We meet on the Spring Street steps, where I'd seen Brutus stab Caesar one summer night against the fitting backdrop of classical columns. I have walked or driven past these triumphal granite steps countless times but never ascended them to the forecourt as we do now. I stand here in amazement. The courtyard is an enchanting space, a brick floor surrounded by columned porticos, while above the tower reaches into the sky. Facing the street, I see the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the distance, framed by arches.
On the tiled walls are depictions of the city's industries, including shipping, oil drilling, manufacturing and movie-making. When I later consult the website "Public Art in Los Angeles" (usc.edu/isd/archives/la/pubart), I learn that these tiles were fashioned by an unknown artist at the tile manufacturer. I find this piece of information strangely poignant, evoking the whole chain of anonymous artisans through the ages who have adorned public buildings with their work and care.
I look up at the tower, so familiar from other angles but here in a different view. Our guide informs us that when City Hall was built, there was a 150-foot limit on the height of buildings in L.A. A referendum allowed an exemption for City Hall, which was built to three times that height. I try to picture Downtown some 80 years ago with this structure so hugely dominant over all else, like a church in the Middle Ages, or Downtown's tallest building, Library Tower, today.
Our guide mentions that the top of the City Hall tower was designed to resemble the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Never let it be said that the City Hall architects - John Parkinson, Albert C. Martin and John C. Austin - lacked vision. I am fascinated by this wedding of ancient glory to modern design and technology, and think again about L.A. in the 1920s, when such a statement was deemed appropriate for a city hall.
The decade saw Los Angeles soar in population, from 577,000 in 1920 to 1,238,000 in 1930, surpassing San Francisco to become the most populous city in the state and the fourth largest metropolitan district in the nation. Powerful men dominated the scene, with direct or indirect ties to city government: Harry Chandler, the influential publisher of the Los Angeles Times; William Mulholland, chief engineer and general manager of the L.A. Department of Water and Power; Henry Huntington, real estate magnate and owner of the Pacific Electric Railway Company, whose Red Car trolleys were ubiquitous throughout L.A. and outlying areas. (One popular ride was from Downtown to Venice Beach, in 50 minutes.)
In a 1971 Westways article, Bill and Nancy Boyarsky described a 1920s Downtown scene: "People were coming Downtown from all over the city - the rich in big cars, the less affluent on public conveyances, making a noisy confusion of rattling streetcars, clattering autos and an occasional bewildered horse, left over from the previous era."
I think about 1920s Downtown with Chandler and Mulholland, clattering autos and rattling streetcars, movie palaces and Mexican laborers, and the eccentric evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson founding her gospel church in nearby Echo Park. I picture City Hall rising in the midst of all this, with an anonymous artisan fashioning tiles and its tower patterned after the mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
page 6, 12/06/04
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
There is perhaps nothing more taken-for-granted in Downtown than City Hall. While notations that City Hall is "L.A.'s most recognizable landmark" are outdated (harking back to the days when it served as the location for the Daily Planet in the "Superman" TV series), City Hall is certainly well known to all who live or work in the vicinity.
Like most Downtowners, I was aware that City Hall, completed in 1928, underwent major restoration and seismic renovation in the 1990s; the work - $300 million worth - was finished in 2001. I was also aware that the main interior feature is a central rotunda, and that the observation deck at the top, with its commanding city views, was recently reopened to the public.
Yet, although I've attended rallies through the years on the lawn and steps of the First Street entrance, and enjoyed an imaginative performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar staged on the Spring Street steps, other than a brief foray to the city finance office I'd never been inside City Hall. I decided to take the L.A. Conservancy tour on a recent Saturday morning.
We meet on the Spring Street steps, where I'd seen Brutus stab Caesar one summer night against the fitting backdrop of classical columns. I have walked or driven past these triumphal granite steps countless times but never ascended them to the forecourt as we do now. I stand here in amazement. The courtyard is an enchanting space, a brick floor surrounded by columned porticos, while above the tower reaches into the sky. Facing the street, I see the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the distance, framed by arches.
On the tiled walls are depictions of the city's industries, including shipping, oil drilling, manufacturing and movie-making. When I later consult the website "Public Art in Los Angeles" (usc.edu/isd/archives/la/pubart), I learn that these tiles were fashioned by an unknown artist at the tile manufacturer. I find this piece of information strangely poignant, evoking the whole chain of anonymous artisans through the ages who have adorned public buildings with their work and care.
I look up at the tower, so familiar from other angles but here in a different view. Our guide informs us that when City Hall was built, there was a 150-foot limit on the height of buildings in L.A. A referendum allowed an exemption for City Hall, which was built to three times that height. I try to picture Downtown some 80 years ago with this structure so hugely dominant over all else, like a church in the Middle Ages, or Downtown's tallest building, Library Tower, today.
Our guide mentions that the top of the City Hall tower was designed to resemble the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Never let it be said that the City Hall architects - John Parkinson, Albert C. Martin and John C. Austin - lacked vision. I am fascinated by this wedding of ancient glory to modern design and technology, and think again about L.A. in the 1920s, when such a statement was deemed appropriate for a city hall.
The decade saw Los Angeles soar in population, from 577,000 in 1920 to 1,238,000 in 1930, surpassing San Francisco to become the most populous city in the state and the fourth largest metropolitan district in the nation. Powerful men dominated the scene, with direct or indirect ties to city government: Harry Chandler, the influential publisher of the Los Angeles Times; William Mulholland, chief engineer and general manager of the L.A. Department of Water and Power; Henry Huntington, real estate magnate and owner of the Pacific Electric Railway Company, whose Red Car trolleys were ubiquitous throughout L.A. and outlying areas. (One popular ride was from Downtown to Venice Beach, in 50 minutes.)
In a 1971 Westways article, Bill and Nancy Boyarsky described a 1920s Downtown scene: "People were coming Downtown from all over the city - the rich in big cars, the less affluent on public conveyances, making a noisy confusion of rattling streetcars, clattering autos and an occasional bewildered horse, left over from the previous era."
I think about 1920s Downtown with Chandler and Mulholland, clattering autos and rattling streetcars, movie palaces and Mexican laborers, and the eccentric evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson founding her gospel church in nearby Echo Park. I picture City Hall rising in the midst of all this, with an anonymous artisan fashioning tiles and its tower patterned after the mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
page 6, 12/06/04
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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