Los Angeles Music Center, 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA

Significance: The Los Angeles Music Center is important to the cultural history of Los Angeles as a post-World War II cultural center for the performing arts and as a physical and spiritual symbol that helped drive the revival of downtown Los Angeles during the 1960s period of Urban Renewal and redevelopment. The Music Center became an added element to a 1947 master plan for Los Angeles created by Burnett Turner that created an east-west axis civic center plan connected by parks, plazas, and buildings, stretching from the 1928 Los Angeles City Hall up to the crest of downtown's Bunker Hill, where an eventual Department of Power and Water building would be located. The Music Center was largely constructed within that planned axis between 1962 to 1967, with the centerpiece "Peace on Earth" sculpture added in 1969. Its existence is attributable to the determination and tenacity of Dorothy Buffum Chandler of the powerful Los Angeles Times' Chandler family. She began organizing, promoting, and fund-raising for a permanent location for the Los Angeles Philharmonic as early as 1955 and was unwavering in her efforts to see the complex completed.

Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N909

Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N2186

Survey number: HABS CA-2780

Building/structure dates: 1964-1967 Initial Construction

Building/structure dates: 1982 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1989 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1994 Subsequent Work

concert halls music performing arts east los angeles los angeles music center north grand avenue los angeles los angeles county california plazas public sculpture urban renewal bronze fountains stairways modern architectural elements square columns canopies outdoor furniture colonnades eaves welton becket olive behrendt dorothy buffum chandler bridgers and troller cornell ralph d cornell county of los angeles chief executive office henry dreyfus donald faxon teresa grimes historic american buildings survey vern o knudsen david lee paul leonard jacques lipchitz jo mielziner tavo olmos inc peter kiewit and sons positive image photographic services jean rosenthal grace salvatori inc sapphos environmental ben schlanger luigi tommasi paul veneklasen welton becket and associates maynard woodward ultra high resolution high resolution library of congress

1933 - 1970

Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/

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