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