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Downtown LA City Hall
Downtown Los Angeles City Hall
Overview: Los Angeles’ stately City Hall juts into the sky – strong, confident and grand. The picturesque City Hall is located in the northwest area of Downtown Los Angeles near Bunker HIll and the Music Center in Los Angeles’ government center. The government center, known as the Civic Center, is one block between 1st St (south), Temple St (north), Spring St (west) and Main St (east).
Downtown Los Angeles City Hall
Built in 1928, L.A.’s City Hall is 452 feet tall and has 32 floors. It has three main towers: Low Rise floors or basement, which has 4 floors, Mid Rise floors with 6 floors (5 – 10th floors) and the High Rise tower, which goes up to the 32nd floor. You may be familiar with L.A.’s City Hall and it’s tower, which is said to resemble the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. It was the location of the Daily Planet in the television series Adventures of Superman in the 1950s.
One of Los Angeles’ historic monuments, City Hall was retro-fitted for seismic activity in the late 1990s to 2001 as well as for wheelchair accessibility. The website, www.LACityHall.org states that the renovations took “30,000 cubic yards of concrete, 3,000 tons of structural steel, 5,000 tons of reinforcing steel, and an additional 68,467 million pounds of dead weight to the building.” City Hall was placed on “a mechanical system of isolators and dampers”, which “dampen” earthquake movement effects as related to the building. This technology is known as “decoupling” and is the main reasons why L.A.’s City Hall won the American Public Works Association (APWA) Historic Preservation Award in 2001.
Downtown Los Angeles City Hall
L.A.’s City Hall has garnered a reputation for its pleasing aesthetics among the locals both for the mosaics on the ceilings and along the outside walls, courtyards, arch ways and columns – especially in the evenings – as well as the view of Los Angeles from the tower.
Location: 200 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Site: www.lacityhall.org
Ph: (213) 485-2121
Cost: Free
Parking: About $14 max
Accessibility: The Los Angeles City Hall is wheelchair accessible.
Getting There: www.ladottransit.com, www.metro.net