Los Angeles architecture

My favorite subreddit is r/evil buildings. What I have noticed are beautiful buildings stuck behind the new hideous ones. ( Imo) But, yes, I agree with you . Stunning architecture, but you must really look for them behind the ugly ones.

I stayed with a friend in Mid-City and was amazed at how beautiful it was. Block after block of small but classic early 20th century homes with some of the most beautiful gardens and plantings I have seen.

LA is floral is a way very few cities are.

R2 has never been to Druid Hills!

Pictures for us non-Angelenos would be nice.

LA is mostly second rate. There are some amazing suburbs though.

OP: I think you might enjoy this lecture by Thomas Hines, professor emeritus of History and Architecture at UCLA. I took a couple of his courses, including a fantastic seminar on the History of Los Angeles (which had a heavy emphasis on architecture). Best field-trip ever!

My friend John Wellborn Root says that the place known as 'Los Angeles' is merely fields of orange groves and NOTHING else.

LA’s gems are subtle but once you notice them, wow.

My family lives in a coastal LA neighborhood that has designs by Frank L. Wright’s son and The Olmsted Brothers.

It’s gorgeous.

Too many think of LA as a vast architectural wasteland when it actually has some of the most beautiful art deco anywhere.

Good, let them all stay on the east coast.

I hate crowds.

Please post pics of these LA architectural wonders. That's not DL bitchery... I want to see the buildings!

sorry, posted it on the wrong thread. Oh well

Chicago has been architecturally dreadful for decades. All new skyscrapers look like this. Giant blue glass blobs.

But to OP’s point, Los Angeles has magnificent architecture but given its sprawl it is not so obvious and another side effect of the sprawl is that so much space is filled with ugly poorly built structures.

[quote]Chicago has been architecturally dreadful for decades. All new skyscrapers look like this. Giant blue glass blobs.

Because all that ugly modern shit in Los Angeles they keep building is just wonderful….

Architecture? All we care about are the sneaker stores on Melrose and Gucci at the mall! Can i get a loot-loot!

[quote] Because all that ugly modern shit in Los Angeles they keep building is just wonderful….

Yes. “Ugly modern shit”. So true. It is so terrible here. Why would anyone want to come to LA?

[quote] Good, let them all stay on the east coast. I hate crowds.

Yup. Let them think that Chicago and Druid Hills are superior.

And let’s not post any photos so they’ll continue to stay in Chicago and Druid Hills.

The problem with the LA area is that there is no landmark preservation. Not any with teeth anyway. The fact that the Brown Derby was demolished is enough of an example. A lot of the Hollywood Regency and Deco buildings are gone. More are demolished every year.

Los Angeles still has their old beautiful theaters. The Orpheum theatre.

The Pantages theatre.

It's true that there are gems - but it is also hodgepodge. It's the same in neighborhoods - you can have beautiful spanish homes from the 20s next to Cape Cod style right next to ugly ranch houses.

Bullocks Wilshire (now a law school) is an art deco feat. Of course, you can only see it once a year pre-pandemic.

The Bullocks Wilshire is unsurpassed.

Pics of all the Art Deco buildings in LA and where to find them.

The LA Public Library and the Griffin Observatory are beautiful examples of Art Deco.

You'd have to be living under a fucking rock to think LA is an aesthetic wasteland. Big, sophisticated LIFELONG New Yorker can't get on a 5 hour flight. I hope you're 21 and not an incredibly stupid middle-aged adult.

The Cicada Bar is a little Art Deco gem, with (extensive) glass by the original Lalique.

Chicago is a more complete catalog (literally) of US architecture from the post-Fire era and early skyscrapers into postmodernism. LA is a lot patchier---some nice between the wars stuff, much of it residential in places like Pasadena and Hancock Park. Downtown LA is great because so much of the business district was simply neglected for decades--the old department stores and theaters, along with the Bradbury and Grand Central Market. But once you get beyond Wright, Neutra, etc., it's mostly kitsch or gimmicky--the symphony hall, the blue whale, etc. and the relatively contemporary residential stuff is either forgettable or (more recently) excessive. The vernacular stucco covered cheap bungalow tends not to age well. The typical Chicago brick bungalow holds up better despite being pretty monotonous and Chicago has many attractive neighborhoods near the lake, not to mention the North Shore 'burbs.

I'm just leave this here ..

Here even.

More Bullock's Wilshire...

[quote] Too many think of LA as a vast architectural wasteland when it actually has some of the most beautiful art deco anywhere.

So does The Bronx.

The Bronx has more beautiful art deco than anywhere else in the world, even Casablanca and Tel Aviv, or South Beach. In the US you have to give props to Tulsa for its preservation efforts.

Not to mention Napier.

Goodwill

The Casino Theater, Catalina Island (part of Los Angeles County). The entrance is incredible, with an art deco mermaid above beautiful doors. The inside is fab u lous. Check out all of the photos at the attached site. It really is the crown jewel in my opinion.

Griffin Observatory

The most iconic structure is the HOLLYWOOD sign. That's all and it says everything.

As built it said "Hollywoodland" right?

And it was covered in flashing lights that lit up "Holly" "Wood" and "Land" in succession.

Los Angeles Millenium Biltmore hotel. I think this is the place where I had afternoon tea. I don't know what the architectural style is called, but I would consider it an LA gem.

It's controversial, but the Disney concert hall (DTLA) is an architectural landmark.

Santa Barbara and Montecito have more great architecture than the whole rest of California.

And Frank Gehry is boring and has no aesthetic sense.

I meant Southern California. No disrespect to the Bay Area!

I like the old LAPD headquarters building, more than the new one. I didn't realize it's facing demolition.

Miami is more weird

R7 has dead link

LA does have some of the best, most arresting, architecture in the world. As has observed above, the fact that there is sprawl, and that there is a mix of styles... not a city where there was "one" aesthetic or period... Spanish colonial, next to Tudor, next to mid-century modern. To fully appreciate it you need to be on acid.

It hasn't always been good about preserving its treasures... it's doing better in recent decades. The Richfield Tower, one of the best Art Deco skyscrapers in history, black (for oil, or so it was told) with golden highlights... torn down in the 70s?

A lot of the buildings had to be torn down to meet earthquake standards. Retrofitting is very expensive (and may not be as effective) but has been done to preserve older historic buildings.

LA's a dump

LA old timers rave about Bullocks Wiltshire as some kind of glorious marvel. It’s fine - but it ain’t all that. Mediocre by Chicago standards.

Paramount Studios and film noir locations.

A link to the LA Conservancy, a great resource for those interested in LA architecture.

Los Angeles as an architectural center?

We're talking about architecture, right? And not staging and sets-as-human-habitat, with fancies added for zing?

Right.

Sure.

Yeah, R52.

We're talking about R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright and Lloyd Wright, Julia Morgan, Irving Gill, Greene and Greene and the Arroyo Movement, the Bungalow style, Paul R. Williams, Wallace Neff, John Byers, the Eichler developments, the Case Study Houses, John Lautner, Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig, John Parker Davidson, Bruce Goff, Charles and Ray Eames, Harwell Harris, William Kesling and dozens of other architects who figured out in the first half of the 20th century what the modern house was going to be while the East Coast architectural establishment sat around with its pwecious widdle fist up its ass and Eurotrashland blew itself to pieces - twice - and spent the rest of its time throwing up cinderblock shitboxes and chugging Stalinist cock.

R53 You sound angry.

That's okay. R52 sounds stupid.

Most of those people you mentioned made their name in other locations further east. Bruce Goff, for example, was in Oklahoma for most of his life. LA didn't even have modernists of the caliber of the Weiner brothers of Shreveport, much less anyone capable of something as grand as Fair Park in Dallas. True, turnabout is fair play, and LA's Charles Moore designed the New Orleans World's Fair of 1984, but let's not kid ourselves about how LA was built: by developers, for developers, and no architectural sissies allowed: certainly Bernard Maybeck would have starved there.

False, R56. With the exception of Goff and Frank Lloyd Wright himself, all of the names I mentioned were active primarily in the LA area (a distinction can be made for Irving Gill, who was chiefly active in San Diego, and Morgan, who had more commissions in the Bay Area).

R.M. Schindler and Lloyd Wright, not of the caliber of the Weiner Brothers? I'm not knocking them, mind - they were great. But William Kessler alone was easily their equal at his best. And Kessler designed over 800 houses.

By the way, Maybeck had only one commission in LA - but it was his largest domestic design outside of his work for Hearst, the Earle C. Anthony Mansion in Los Feliz.

Neff studied under Ralph Adams Cram of that famed East Coast establishment, the Eames met studying at Cranbrook (Detroit through Cranbrook, had an outsized influence on American modernism and post-modernism through Yamasaki, and yet who would today call Detroit an architectural capital? Like LA it had some elite practitioners but the general aspect was decidedly more plebian).

You're grasping at straws. Richard Morris Hunt and Louis Sullivan studied in Paris. Does that make them French?

Julia Morgan was a NorCal architect, and Irving Gill studied under Louis Sullivan and made his name at Chicago and San Diego World's Fairs

I heard it was Louis Sullivan— and not FLW— who invented the phrase "The Genius Versus The Mobocracy.

Neutra and Schindler were Austrian born

Morgan knew Hearst because she designed his mother's house in Pleasanton

I love this Louis Sullivan.

Fantastic art nouveau ornament on an otherwise bare facade.

I think I deserve an award for that split infinitive.

People forget that the man who gave the world the wonderful Fallingwater also did some sort of disturbing, unlivable work in Los Angeles. Here's a KCET documentary on those houses that's excellent for anyone interested in Frank Lloyd Wright or in architecture in general.

R31 I watched your Bronx video. What in particular are you seeing that stands out? It's miles of 5-7 story insignificant buildings, one after another. What is so special?

We were once friends of Richard Nuetra’s wife. Their home in Silverlake was an ingenious design. I met her via my work for the Mahler Society, an extraordinary group of Vienna expats who lived in LA.

Richard designed a Steinway with stainless legs for the house. My dear friend Mario Fenninger played an extraordinary recital there. Magical evening that showed the genius of his design that created wonderful acoustics.

LA was/is home to extraordinary architects and designers who work in the movie studios. Their work has influenced architectural design for generations.

Also, although residential architecture is not as celebrated. My work has taken me into my wonderful designs. And some turkeys, of course

As a Chicago native whose dad worked on many Chicago landmarks, I am very proud to have been his biggest fan. Our idea of a Sunday drive was into city. He taught me building’s architects and we talked about the design style and elements. I love Chicago for that reason. Btw, dad constructed the Picasso sculpture in the City Plaza. It was made of cor-ten steel, as was the building, a first use of that steel that rusts into a rich patina.

The Picasso work was my favorite talk with my dad. The sculpture, very controversial at the time, received lots of press at the time. I still have a set blueprints of the sculpture with Picasso’s signature with a little drawing he did.

The architecture of LA is more “hunt and seek”. But many gems- not all in full view without some effort.

Henry Hobson Richardson was from Louisiana. That doesn't make him a Louisiana architect.

Cass Gilbert was from Minneapolis. Did he stay very long in Minneapolis? No. No, he did not.

Louis H. Sullivan was from Boston. Not a single building in Boston to his credit.

Your "but...but...but they came from somewhere else!" is sophistic bullshit.

Art Deco LA somehow not up to the tip-top standards of....Fair Park, Dallas? The Ennis House somehow MORE unlivable than...Fallingwater?

Should have gone to Spec Savers, love.

FLW could have used some engineering education. Also, his drawing skills were not the best, probably why he was not concerned with beauty. For all that, he did have some very functional houses. Susan Lawrence Dana's house, for example, is wonderful.

Wiltern Theatre

Most of the good stuff is private in LA. As opposed to interesting architecture cities like Chicagonwhere it’s available ale for all to see. Representative of LA. A great life if you have money to live in Bel Air - a horrible life to live in the filth of downtown and Skid Row,

LA may not stand out in its architecture compared to other cities but there is an illusion of old Hollywood glamour behind the old buildings especially the old movie theaters which they've restored to its former glory.

BTS filmed Black Swan in the Los Angeles theatre and captured the beauty its ornate interior-- French Baroque.

Here's a link to the movie theaters they have restored in downtown LA.

[quote] Stretching for six blocks from 3rd to 9th Streets along South Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles, the historic Broadway Theatre District includes 12 movie theatres built between 1910 and 1931. At its height, the neon-drenched district had the highest concentration of cinemas in the world, with seating capacity for more than 15,000 patrons. The Broadway Theatre District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 1979, the first and largest historic theatre district listed on the Register. [bold] It is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States.[/bold]

I'm baffled about the comments denying "LA architects" because they were not born, nor started their career in LA.

Well, LA last century, NO ONE was born there. (I was, in 1950). It's like denying any of the Hollywood stars were Hollywood stars except the ones born in Hollywood.

Speaking of Wallace Neff.....

This Neff design in Newport Beach was on the market for about a year before it sold in 2020. If only I'd had $8 million burning a hole in my pocket....(and better knees).

In Inglewood...

To echo others, IMO, LA has a lot of great architecture. A lot of it is residences confined to neighborhoods that visitors may not pass through. Also, it's hard to take in a large cross-section of LA architecture just by walking around as in NYC. Visitors might go to a specific area and walk a few blocks, but that's it. I guess if they do that for lots and lots of areas, they'd see a lot, but most don't.

What the hell is a "well-seat"?

Los Angeles is a dozen award-winning buildings surrounded by 2,000 gas stations.

Not true R76. There are at least 6 in downtown San Antonio, and rather more in Chicago

Obviously you were watching the traffic and not the buildings R68

R76, I believe the point is that they are all concentrated in six blocks on one street. Six or so scattered throughout the city is not the same thing.

Cleveland restored their cluster of downtown movie palaces decades ago. Every medium to large city has at least one (Atlanta's Fox, DC's Warner, Pittsy's Heinz Hall).

They are all downtown R86

R77, it's R56, trying to cover up the fact that his assertion that the architects I listed "made their name" in locations back east is bullshit.

You can tell how he's parceling out his responses after Googling each name.

[quote] What the hell is a 'well-seat"?"

It is a euphemism.

Some downtown theaters...

The most stunning house is the Eames Case Study house. It used to only be open once a year on their anniversary. I only walked around the outside, but a LACMA exhibit did a full scale cut away of it in an exhibit.

pink & aqua

Do you know where that building is located, r92? (Google Images calls it "executive car.")

It's across from the Pio Pico - Koreatown branch library (694 S. Oxford), r93.

[quote] I'm baffled about the comments denying "LA architects" because they were not born, nor started their career in LA.

Someone's just trying to obscure not knowing LA is a notable architecture city. There's a lot of interesting buildings and some 20th century architects took to LA like a blank slate.

The Case Study houses

I like that picturesque white art gallery perched on top of the mountain— though I'm sure it's hellish to get to and from.

And it's a fire hazard too, isn't it?

"It is a euphemism."

Not in English.

Broadway Street in / near DTLA has a city feel to it.

R97 - let me guess - you're British or Australian, correct?

I'm not covering up anything. You came out saying LA was superior to the east, and that's ridiculous.

Guilty, as charged, R100.

Is it a good building?

Pre-pandemic there were LA Modernism architectural tours you could do, I'm sure they'll re-surge. There are also general LA architectural tours. Also, check out the website of the Los Angeles Conservancy, it's full of great info and resources.

What would you call this architecture?

R104 I always think of it as "dutch Indian colonial".... but I think there's a more specific answer. I Googled a bit, without success. I trust the collective of DL wisdom.

R102, it is.

It's too bad that downtown LA has not been fully restored or cleaned up to its true potential.

The towns outside of LA have much nicer downtowns. I used to hang out in the Wilshire district or Pasadena which restored their downtown years ago and has the best little restaurants even in the alleyways. However, that was pre-pandemic.

I've always been fascinated by this bridge in Pasadena.

[quote] I like that picturesque white art gallery perched on top of the mountain— though I'm sure it's hellish to get to and from.

Are you talking about the Griffith Observatory because that's not an art gallery. It's a pleasant ride if go on an off day. The only museum on a hill is Getty Museum but that's relatively new (1997).

R104 Dutch

R107 That's the famous suicide bridge

R105 Sorry, didn't see your response. I think it may be more of a Dutch Modern style.

Cape of Good Hope Dutch

R110 Yep, Suicide Bridge... over the Arroyo Seco where I grew up. I remember as a kid looking up at it from the arroyo speculating on the bodies tumbling over and down to their death.

What is a well-seat, OP?

No mention of the old May company building, now an abomination made by the Academy?

How about the Chemosphere?

r104 It's glancing at the famous campanario of Mission San Antonio de Padua; and the adjacent arches strengthen the association. So, a kind of Mission Revival?

I was just there last Wednesday, r115...

Definitely some similarities, r117.

r118- was it worth it? Considering a membership.

A friend took me, r120, so I didn't pay. There were some interesting things but I don't think they're "there" yet. I'll be curious what other installations they'll have in the future.

[quote] What is a well-seat, OP?

It s a thing from which other things come forth. It alludes to a well of spring water.

It is a catalyst. It could be seen as place of insemination.

If Louis Sullivan were here, he'd describe it as 'a germ'. Do you need to ask how Louis Sullivan thought of 'a germ',

R122, please show us somewhere the term has been used. An internet search shows plenty of use of the term "well seated", but that has a different use than the one you proposed.

Dear R123

As I asked, R124, please show us an actual use. The chart you sent doesn't do that, and it could be picking up the use of 'well seated'.

'Well seated' is an adjective. 'Well seat' is a noun.

Recourse to Google Books reveals no usage that I can find of "well seat" in the meaning proposed by OP, though others more diligent than I may have more luck.

An issue of "The Railway Engineer" of February 1896, p. 43, shows a diagram of a "First-class well seat," and much edifies us by stating that "The formation of an ordinary back squab and well seat (untrimmed) for a first class compartment is shown by figs. 555-6."

The always interesting "Domestic Engineering and Journal of Mechanical Contracting," vol. 102, March 3, 1923, p. 439, talks about and indeed shows the Built-Well Seat, which is a toilet seat.

There are numerous collisions of "well" and "seat" due to the vagaries of printing and punctuation and how such are recorded by Google Books; but such accidents are not OP's meaning.

The desired term in English, if I understand OP's usage, would I think be "wellspring."

I think the old Getty in the Roman style.

R127, sorry for the misspelling - I meant to type well-spring and fucked up.

Eastern Columbia Lofts. Built in 1930, formerly the headquarters for a clothing company, now home to 140 luxury condominiums.

Thanks, R127. That makes more sense than OP's use or the defenses of R122 and R124.

Downtown Chicago is gorgeous. LA is ugly in comparison.

They have the Mascara dress, r120...

More of the Wiltern...

Yes, R131, that was certainly the burning issue of contention on this thread. I will sleep better tonight!

Headliner at the Wiltern was Randy Rainbow, sold out. Oh my

R131, R135

The English language is a vibrant language and we should enjoy all its permutations.

(But we shouldn't accept the moronic gibberish and misspelling being practised by the current generation)

That was right before the shutdown, r136.

Randy sold it out!

I wish we saw more examples of Cape Dutch architecture in California. It’s a style well suited for the land and climate. Cape Dutch also compliments Mission Revival very well. Both are graceful without being excessive or austere.

The house the OP posted reminded me of the architecture of Aruba and Curacao. Not as colorful, but similar. I found the architecture of the islands to be a fun, whimsical look, especially with the bright colors.

Randy's...