13 Buildings That Tell LA's Architectural Story

While LA's downtown lacks the kind of in-your-face skyscraping architectural monuments you'll find in towns like Chicago or NYC, a bit of urban spelunking (especially into residential neighborhoods and the surrounding burbopolis) reveals Southern California's storied architectural past. These 13 buildings range from a fast-food joint to an apartment building to the gleaming Gehry--and are just a point of departure. Tell us about your favorites!

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Paying Respects to the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California

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The late architectural historian Reyner Banham called it “The house that really taught the world’s architecture lovers to come to Los Angeles.” The 1949 Eames House is a National Historic Landmark. But where is it? Make an advance appointment through the Eames Foundation and you, too, can visit the near-perfectly preserved Case Study House No. 8 that you know from countless books and photographs. Hiding in a quiet residential street and situated on modest park-like grounds, overhung with eucalyptus, Charles and Ray’s human-scaled house and studio exemplify that moment in modern architecture when mass-produced glass and steel seemed like the perfect postwar kit of parts for affordable housing. It remains a paragon of modest, sensible living. By: GladysG | Photo: John Morse

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The late architectural historian Reyner Banham called it “The house that really taught the world’s architecture lovers to come to Los Angeles.” The 1949 Eames House is a National Historic Landmark. But where is it? Make an advance appointment through the Eames Foundation and you, too, can visit the near-perfectly preserved Case Study House No. 8 that you know from countless books and photographs. Hiding in a quiet residential street and situated on modest park-like grounds, overhung with eucalyptus, Charles and Ray’s human-scaled house and studio exemplify that moment in modern architecture when mass-produced glass and steel seemed like the perfect postwar kit of parts for affordable housing. It remains a paragon of modest, sensible living.

By: GladysG | Photo: John Morse

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A note about Trazzler's slideshows: we don't do top-tens or best-of lists. Nor are we so morbid or presumptuous as to tell you where you must go before you shuffle off this mortal coil. The world is far too big and fascinating to encapsulate in any kind of definitive list. We simply chose the places that our writers have contributed that make us think, laugh, dream, and, in this case, experience a vicarious vertiginous thrill. --Megan Cytron, Editor of Trazzler

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Comments

[Alana Coons]

02:16 AM on 12/24/2010

Anybody notice that #13 is the George Marston House Museum & gardens in SAN DIEGO. http://sohosandiego.org/marston/index.htm

[shirleyfeeney]

12:50 AM on 12/21/2010

The Bradbury Building is a sight to behold...just gorgeous. It was also used in an episode of Quantum Leap that was actually set in NYC, which always made me laugh since I'd been inside and knew exactly where it was in Los Angeles!

I always make sure to take my kids inside Union Station when we trek out to Olvera Street for taquitos. It's a stunning building (and I'm a NYC native who loveslovesloves Grand Central Terminal) and you feel the history the minute you walk in.

I haven't been back up to the Observatory since the refurbishment, but it really is on my list of things to do....when the rain is over! Can't wait!

[thebigbike]

07:54 PM on 12/18/2010

I knew the gehry wreckage was gonna be in there. but it does document the decline and fall of civilization as we knew it..... sort of arc hitecture AFTER the Big ONe

[mlaiuppa]

04:57 PM on 12/18/2010

Missing in action:

The Goodyear (or is it Firestone?) tire plant that became a shopping mall.

The Getty Villa.

[shirleyfeeney]

12:51 AM on 12/21/2010

The Citadel? I agree. At least it was *sort of* saved. The same with the Olympic Bakery. It's now a shopping center too.

[nidhi]

02:08 PM on 12/18/2010

I live behind the Observatory and its helped me learn to love LA which is a tough city to live in.

[SarcasticFringehead]

03:42 PM on 12/18/2010

I know what you mean. I grew up south of the Observatory in Hollywood.

Griffith Park and the Observatory were my sanctuary when I was a teenager; my only escape from the concrete and shoddy surroundings of Hollywood.

The view from the Observatory always lifted my spirits. It still does.

[nidhi]

02:09 AM on 12/20/2010

That view has really helped me survive some tough times here..I've missed friends there and forgotten about bad days..everyday I'm thankful I can go there without needing a car..thanks for sharing your experience with me..

[Dan Zuffi]

02:44 PM on 12/19/2010

When we were kids in the late 50's and early 60's my dad would drop us off at Forest Lawn Blvd in Burbank and we would spend the entire day hiking up the the Observatory. Now I can barely make up the hill from Fern Dell when I visit dear old dad, but I try anyway.

[nidhi]

02:10 AM on 12/20/2010

I still huff and puff up the hill and lie down flat on the grass when I finally reach the top and then go see that galaxy from the big telescope they have up there:)

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

01:25 PM on 12/18/2010

Hello? How could have left out Hollyhock House? What about City Hall? The Bonaventure? All quintessential LA.

[mlaiuppa]

04:58 PM on 12/18/2010

I love the Hollyhock house. I took a tour through there.

And where are the theaters? Not one restored theater made the list.

[shirleyfeeney]

12:53 AM on 12/21/2010

I was also rather expecting to see the Herald Examiner building, as the woman WRH hired to design it was the same who designed San Simeon. It's another treasure.

[HoHoHats]

12:04 PM on 12/18/2010

There need to be a HoHo Hat party!! We have so many types, they are reversible to change as the night goes on, and are even customizable! http://www.hohohats.com

[julbar]

11:49 AM on 12/18/2010

Love love love these. Thanks for showing the great range of very special architecture that is all LA.

[PharmaCan]

11:32 AM on 12/18/2010

Apparently whoever chose these buildings is more of an architect groupie than someone with an eye for attractive buildings. I guess maybe being the first person to build something truly ugly makes it significant in some respect, but it doesn't make it any less ugly.

While L.A. may not be an architectural mecca, it does have its share of very attractive buildings and what is shown here is certainly not indicative of what L.A. has to offer

[Rich Phitzwell]

10:24 AM on 12/18/2010

Love the graffiti on pic 8. I hate LA with a passion, but I will say in some of the crappiest areas of the city where warehouses and industry intermingle with residential you will find some very old to LA area industrial buildings that have the most amazing structural design. All wood with great expanses using beams that cant be found today.

[KeithH1]

10:06 AM on 12/18/2010

LAs architectural story is not told by these 13 buildings. These 13 building have nothing to do with LA. LAs architectural story is told by the 2 million ugly stucco boxes shit out by developers for the lowest cost possible. It is told by the total lack of any aesthetic standards in 95% of the area. Got $2million to spend on a house? You get a cookie cutter Faux Tuscan box complete with real simulated stone trimming made out of stucco covered Styrofoam (absolutely no joke).

People love the weather in LA, and after 100 years and 10 million people, that's still the only thing worth talking about in LA.

[thebigbike]

08:00 PM on 12/18/2010

you got it. though 2 million stucco boxes I'm quite sure is an understatement. After all what is the slang term for a southern claifornia apartment house with units above the carport area? "dingbat"

although it should be noted that Malvina Reynolds song about "see the boxes little boxes and they're all made out of tickytacky, they're all made out of tickytacky and they all look just the same was written about the hillside development south of San Francisco-- so LA can at least say "Nyaaah Nyahh Nyaaah, you do it too"

[mekotodo]

04:56 AM on 12/19/2010

That's quite a bit of a broad and naive generalization. Reading some Reyner Banham or watching his 1972 BBC documentary is a good place to start learning about LA architecture, and the 'LA School of Urbanism' later in the 1980s (Michael Dear, Ed Soja, Mike Davis, Allen Scott, et al.)

The suburbs are like you describe, that's quite true. And they are just like every suburb in the USA. Check out any of the metro area suburbs in the USA (DFW, Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, etc.) and you'll see that same description and the same patterns. But LA proper is quite different and more diverse than you describe. And those "13 buildings" (and many, many others) are all about LA, because they are part of LA's history; along with a rich intellectual history of residents like Bertolt Brecht, Carey McWilliams, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, Louis Adamic, Upton Sinclair, Theodor Adorno, etc.. LA has an interesting history that gets too often masked by Hollywood and media stereotypes.

And just for the record, Levittown is in NY. The very original cookie cutter, ticky tack developer's model of a mass produced suburbia. Good old William Levitt, the father of modern suburbia.

[thebigbike]

03:26 PM on 12/19/2010

But, let's face it, LA IS Suburbia and to select 15 or 20 buildings to represent an area with at least 2 or 4 million other buildings which are the ones which -- statistically speaking - ALL of the PEOPLE in LA actually interact with certainly ignores the experience of the "rest of the people" the "little people" The strip mall and the "Valley" deserve to be rocongized and understrood. This list of buldings is the sort of declaration that makes an old fashioned liberal into a tea partybagger -- or to put it a different way a follower of the Annales school of historiography

[MexiChick67]

04:56 AM on 12/18/2010

For those of you interested in LA history and it's conservancy check out http://www.laconservancy.org/ They are doing an awesome job of educating people on the amazing architecture in and about Los Angeles. I love my hometown.

[lightist]

03:59 AM on 12/18/2010

Oh, you cute people always overlook highly important things. What about the downtown LA Prison, one of the most shocking buildings in LA. I mean, cripey's, if you're gonna include a KFC Nightmare Bldg., you could at least tell it like it really is a bit more honestly.

Happy Holidays to the prisoners in there, by the way. It gets a little lonely around the holidays.

[skraeling]

02:55 AM on 12/18/2010

I enjoy the novelty of Disney Hall, but being over 6 ft tall I cannot attend concerts there because the seats are too small and cramped. It is like sitting on an airplane in the worst coach area....very bad interior design...

[thebigbike]

07:56 PM on 12/18/2010

well, so what if it's unusable? they do say there are good acoustics in the hall, though it doesn;t look much like the outside. thankfully

[skraeling]

02:49 AM on 12/19/2010

the acoustics are ok...but it is not a comfortable place...

[forty8r]

01:21 AM on 12/18/2010

What about all the art deco buildings that line Wilshire Blvd. The WIltern Theatre for example? They left out the most beautiful dames that deifined that era.

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

01:25 PM on 12/18/2010

You're so right. The Wiltern is amazing.