Tall Buildings in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is not particularlywell  known for its skyline or as a place with lots of high-rises, but it does in fact have many tall buildings.



L.A. didn't become a very vertical city until recently. It had plenty of land to sprawl out on and height limits in place from fear of earthquakes and to allow maximum sunlight onto streets below.

Los Angeles also developed in a very polycentric pattern with multiple clusters of activity, including business districts. Today if one were to observe L.A. from above, they would see this development pattern, with large tracts of land with horizontal low-rise buildings and scattered clusters of high-rises.

The major high-rise districts of Los Angeles are : Downtown Los Angeles, Century City, Westwood, West Los Angeles, central Santa Monica, Hollywood, Wilshire Center, Warner Center, Sherman Oaks-Encino, Universal City, Miracle Mile-Park La Brea, downtown Long Beach, downtown Glendale, and the LAX area.

Notably, and unlike cities such as Miami or Honalulu, Los Angeles does not really have tall buildings lining the beaches. This is mostly due to California Coastal Commission public access laws and environmental regulations.


Following the first major population boom in the 1880s, Downtown Los Angeles sprouted many elegant buildings - up to 13 floors tall/ 150 feet (which was the highest buildings could be under the law).

 

The sole exception to this was Los Angeles City Hall, built in 1928 and rising to 32 floors tall/ 454 feet. This is also the only tall building in LA to have a roof that is not flat. A more modern law requires all high-rises in LA to have a helicopter pad on the roof for evacuations.



Even when the height limit law was lifted in the late 1950s, developers were at first hesitant to construct buildings taller than City Hall. For example, one of the first modern high-rise buildings in Los Angeles, now known as the AT&T Center, opened in 1965 at 452 feet, deliberately shorter than City Hall. Other tall buildings that opened in the 1960s in Downtown, were often simple and not very much taller than the law had previously allowed.


(interestingly enough, this view which was taken recently, does not really have any post-1960s high-rises in it, allowing for a simulated look back in time to Downtown LA circa 1966).

In the 1960s, high-rises were still fairly scattered, often standing alone.

(this view, showing West Hollywood, also has not changed much in more than 40 years)

 

The first building to be taller than City Hall was the Union Bank of California building which was completed in 1968 at 40 floors at 516 feet tall. In the same year, the first modern apartment towers in Downtown LA opened, the Bunker Hill Towers.

Nearby, several prominent buildings rose in the 1970s, each claiming the title of tallest building in not only LA but also in California and the entire Western United States. These included the twin towers now known as City National Plaza (completed 1972 , 52 floors, 699 feet tall), and the Aon Center (completed in 1973 at 62 floors at 858 feet tall), which remained LA's tallest for more than a decade.

 

A high-rise corridor developed along Wilshire Boulevard just west of Downtown in the 1950s and 1960s and today is home to many consulates and Asian financial services. The area is now surrounded by and for all intensive purposes- part of- Koreatown.

 

On the old backlot of 20th Century Fox Studios, a master-planned business district known as Century City was began in the 1960s and saw the iconic twin towers of Century Plaza rise in 1975 at 44 floors, 571 feet and to this day are the tallest buildings in Southern California outside of Downtown Los Angeles. These buildings were also designed by the same architect who designed the World Trade Center twin towers in New York.

 

 

The cluster of skyscrapers in Century City and the nearby high-rises in Westwood near UCLA are so prominent that they are often mistaken for being Downtown Los Angeles when viewed by visitors at the nearby Getty Center.

 

The Bunker Hill neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles, an old Victorian residential area, was demolished (displacing its residents to nearby areas) and in its place throughout the 1980s and 1990s rose LA's most modern skyscrapers.



Among this wave of skyscraper construction, came the US Bank Building (also known by its non-corporate name, the Library Tower). This building, completed in 1989 at 73 floors and 1018 feet tall, has remained LA's tallest building, and the tallest building west of Chicago.

The building boom of the 1980s also produced tensions in largely residential areas as high-rises rose awkwardly, often right up against the yards of people's homes.

Areas formerly low-rise now had mini-skylines, such as West Los Angeles

Another example of this is the Warner Center area in the southwestern San Fernando Valley.

Skyscraper construction in Los Angeles slowed in the mid- 1990s and it wasn't until the 2000s that the pace picked up again, this time with an influx of new residential and hotel projects in Hollywood and the South Park area of Downtown LA.
The  tallest skyscraper to rise in recent years opened in 2010 and is the LA Live Ritz Carlton Tower, 54 floors, 667 feet tall.

One of my favorite ways in which to enjoy the tall buildings of Los Angeles, is to view them from the winding Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains, from here you can see the clusters of the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley.
Another interesting way to experience them is from a helicopter tour.

 

And even more immersive is to actually get yourself inside one of the tall buildings. The best and easiest is to check out the free public observation deck on the 27th floor of the original LA high-rise, Los Angeles City Hall.