Angels Walk Figueroa - Stanchions · ANGELS WALK FIGUEROA CITY NATIONAL PLAZA PHOTOS COURTESY OF SECURITY PACIFIC COLLECTION / LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY Bottom Photo: Aerial view

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Project Team:Deanna Molloy, Executive Director Angels Walk LADiego Nunez, Director of Operations Angels Walk LARogerio Carvalheiro, Stanchion DesignerCecilia Rasmussen, WriterPatt Morrison, WriterJohn Molloy, Planning ConsultantGraphics: Lane+Lane Design OfficeMap: Cartifact

Acknowledgements:Nick Patsaouras, Polis Builders, LTDBill Robertson, Director, Bureau of Street Services

COPYRIGHT ©2007 BY ANGELS WALK® LA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PERMISSION TO REPRINT OR REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL MUST BE GRANTED IN WRITING BY ANGELS WALK LA, INC.

For more information about Angels Walk or for a copy of the Map/Guidebook, please contact the MTA Public Information Office at (213) 922-6000.

Special Thanks to:Mayor Antonio R. VillaraigosaCity Council of the City of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti, PresidentCouncilmember Jan PerryCouncilmember Bernard Parks

Supported by:City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street ServicesLos Angeles Department of TransportationLos Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation AuthorityDowntown Los Angeles Neighborhood CouncilFigueroa Corridor PartnershipSouth Park Stakeholders GroupSouth Park Business Improvement District

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ANGELS WALK FIGUEROA

SECTION 1 – METRO FIGUEROA

1 Wilshire Boulevard

2 City National Plaza

3 6th & Figueroa Streets

4 Engine Co. No. 28

5 Ernst & Young Plaza/7+Fig Retail Center

6 The Original Pantry Café

7 Variety Arts Center

8 STAPLES Center

9 Los Angeles Convention Center

10 Bob Hope Patriotic Hall

SECTION 2 – WEST ADAMS

11 Stimson House

12 Historic West Adams

13 Automobile Club of Southern California

14 Orthopaedic Hospital

15 Amat Residence

16 Mount St. Mary’s College, Doheny Campus

17 John Tracy Clinic

18 St. James Park

19 Sunshine Mission

20 Forthmann House

SECTION 3 – USC/EXPOSITION PARK

21 Felix Chevrolet

22 Shrine Auditorium & Expo Center

23 University of Southern California

24 Exposition Park Rose Garden

25 Natural History Museum

26 EPICC

27 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

28 California African American Museum

29 California Science Center

30 USC Widney Alumni House

YOU ARE HERE

HNECT TO ANGELS WALK BUNCONNN NKER HILLNLK BNECT T LK BECT TO ANGELS WAO ANGELS WANGELS NGELS NALK BUNS WLS WANGANGNGELS NGELSNGELSGELGEL H

SECTION 2SESES CTION 2CTION 2222

Tall, Dark And ProsperousCity National Plaza’s sleek, gleam-ing, granite-sheathed, 52-story twin towers are monuments to Los Angeles’ long history and oil capital, and to the banking money that followed the black gold.

For more than three decades, the complex, which occupies a city

block, was known by its original name, Arco Plaza, and was also home to the Bank of America in Los Angeles, and the Atlantic Richfield Co. The towers’

significance on the city skyline has been impressive, but Ange-lenos have never forgotten its prede-cessor, the striking and beloved Rich-field Building, or the “Black and Gold,” now torn down.

In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, the master-piece Art Deco Richfield Building arose on this site. Its black terra cotta walls and vertical gold stripes, symbol-izing the black gold of the oil industry, soared skyward for 13 stories to a steel tower blazing the company’s name vertically R-I-C-H-F-I-E-L-D.

The building, which also featured the city’s first underground garage, became an architectural style unto itself. It was designed by Los Angeles architect Stiles O. Clements, whose unforgettable work included the Wiltern, El Capitan and Mayan theatres.

Not quite four decades later, a merger and a fire spelled doom for the landmark. Richfield Oil Corporation merged with Atlantic Refining in 1966 to become Atlantic Richfield, and the following year, on Dec. 10, 1967, an electrical fire in the tower damaged parts of the building.

In 1969, the entire square block of graceful old buildings, including Dawson’s bookstore, Douglas Oil Company, IBM and an apartment house, along with the Richfield building, were demolished to make way for the twin towers.

Opened in 1972 as the tallest buildings in Los Angeles, the towers were designed by A. C. Martin Partners, both architects and structural engineers, in the modernist International Style.

Bauhaus architect and artist Herbert Bayer’s fountain sculpture “Double Ascension” was created for the site in 1973.

Years before, during routine soil testing for an annex to the building, Richfield’s petro-leum geologist Manley Natland had seen a

curious rock. It showed the remains of life in a wetter age — shells,

coral and snails. When the bulldozers began level-

ing the block for the new Arco Plaza, he saw an entire bed of the five-to-seven-million-year-old fossil stone.

Natland had 500 tons hauled away and cut

and polished into stat-ues and tables, which sold

for as much as $40,000 each. Even better, the rock he called

Natlandite became the official rock of the City of Los Angeles.

A Club For The Exclusive Fittingly, across the street from a symbol of oil and banking wealth is an exclusive club whose members include bankers and oil men — and yet it began life above a livery stable several blocks away. The California Club, Los Angeles’ first elite private club, quickly became a bastion of cor-porate and civic power.

In 1887, a few pioneers decided they needed a place to entertain friends with good cigars and hard liquor, and to court would-be investors in the booming real estate market. The founders numbered about two dozen prominent members,

among them mil-lionaire socialist developer H. Gaylord Wilshire and banker Isaias Wolf Hellman, one of the few early Jewish members.

The California Club opened in May 1888 on the second floor of a building at 1st Street and Broadway, above the Tally-Ho Livery Stable. Founding members ponied up $100 to join and $5 a month thereafter.

But as that neighborhood declined and the club’s cof-fers filled, the club moved a few blocks away. The well-known and well-heeled streamed to join. In two years, membership rose from 143 to 236. The bar’s

revenue tripled.

In the late 1920s, the club bought its present

site on Flower Street for $1.1 million. The eight-story brick club, designed by archi-tect Robert D. Farquhar, opened in 1930.

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Arco Towers (now City National Plaza) under construction, 1970.

Richfield Building entry sculpture, 1963. The Art Deco black and gold building was built in 1929. Figures are at UC Santa Barbara campus.

Richfield Building, c. 1930.

Oil wells in the city at Figueroa and College streets, 1926.

View of Los Angeles looking southwest toward 6th and Figueroa streets, c. 1900.

California Club main lounge and exterior view.

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Corner of 1st and Broadway, 1886.

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ANGELS WALK® LA

Angels Walk FigueroaSelect StanchionsSECTION 1 – METRO FIGUEROA 1 Wilshire Boulevard



4 Engine Co. No. 28




8 STAPLES Center



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21 Felix Chevrolet





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Command Post For Southern California’s Car CultureThe headquarters of the Automobile Club of Southern California has sometimes been

mistaken for the ornate Roman Catho-lic St. Vincent de Paul church. The two, along with the imposing Romanesque-

style St. John’s Episcopal Church, were all built at the same intersection during the Roaring Twenties.

But the Auto Club’s 1923 Spanish Colonial Revival towers

are not adorned with the images of saints — just the red, white and blue AAA logo which has come to mean roadside assistance to millions of motorists.

For over a century, the Auto Club has guided drivers and shaped the region’s automobile culture. Easterners who heeded New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley’s popularizing of an Indiana jour-

nalist’s advice to “go west” could thank the Auto Club for ensuring that

they didn’t get lost en route.

The Automobile Club of Southern California began in 1900, when a group of ten Ange-lenos revved up the club to help stage auto races and tours, and to lobby the legislature for better roads. It was one of the first motor clubs in the nation.

In 1914, the Club began placing 4,000 signs on the patchwork road system between Kansas City and Los Angeles that helped motorists to navigate their way to the Golden State.

The First Of Millions Of Horseless CarriagesWith its broad avenues and car-friendly routes, Los Angeles became widely rec-ognized as the heart of the “car culture.” The first man to drive a gasoline-powered car along its streets is believed to be a wealthy New York engineer and inventor

named J. Philip Erie.

His chariot, billed as the first car west of the Mississippi River, made its maiden trip gasping and sput-tering down a Los Angeles street at about 2 a.m. on Sunday, May 30, 1897.

At that hour, Erie rolled his auto out of the downtown garage where it had been built. He cranked it up and set sail from 5th Street down Broadway. As the machine wheezed along, about a half-dozen of his friends hopped aboard to make history.

It wouldn’t be long, the Los Angeles Times predicted, “before a factory is established in Los Angeles for the manufacture of motor wagons.” It also noted that Erie’s vehicle had “about 25 miles an hour concealed in its vitals’’ — a remarkable speed for the time, but one which became an irritatingly slow rush-hour speed to drivers a century later.

Within a very few years, eager motorists began crowding

the same streets in their own new gas carriages.

The first speed limitswere imposed —eight miles an hour in residential districts, six in busi-ness districts.

Traffic slowed down, but auto sales didn’t.

“Count them as they go by — 24 sold last week!”

crowed an Oldsmobile deal-er’s 1903 newspaper ad.

Auto Club Becomes A Driving Force In MotoringBy 1905, gas-powered cars were whizzing over the landscape, and the Club slashed its monthly dues from $5 to $1 to bring in more members, and offer more services.

Several years before the California High-way Patrol began monitoring the state’s roads in 1929, the Auto Club had already formed its own safety patrol, rescuing driv-ers in broken-down vehicles. When auto theft became rampant, the Club started its own theft bureau to track down the thieves. The Club helped to write the state’s Uni-form Vehicle Code and collaborated with public officials in the design of traffic signs and signals.

Its vigilance extended to corrupt offi-cials. In the 1920s, Automo-bile Club signs on Washington Boulevard at the edge of Culver City warned motor-ists to “take an alternate route.” Many tourists who ventured into Culver City via Washington were being fined for such petty offenses as driving in a swimsuit. The signs were removed only after a local judge — who had been pocketing some of the fines himself — was sent to prison.

In 1924, Los Angeles installed its first automated traffic signals right outside the Auto Club. The first was described as “a cross between a railroad semaphore and an alarm clock,’’ and the second was the forerunner of familiar modern signals with red and green lights. Since then, the Auto Club has continued to uphold the rights of

motorists on the roadways and in the halls of the legislature.

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Automobile Club of Southern California headquarters prior to 1930.

Auto Club courtyard featuring an antique car show, 1950s.

The Auto Club’s headquarters located on Olive Street (1911–1914).

Miniature golf course at Adams and Figueroa, 1930.

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Emergency Service Patrol trikes exiting courtyard, late 1930s.

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Angels Walk FigueroaSelect StanchionsSECTION 2 – WEST ADAMS 11 Stimson House




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19 Sunshine Mission

20 Forthmann House

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20 Forthmann House


21 Felix Chevrolet





26 EPICC





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SECTIONSE NSE N 1

A Coliseum For All Seasons And SportsIt wasn’t the first public build-ing designed to enhance Los Angeles’ image, but like its namesake in Rome, it is one of the most enduring.

The huge concrete and steel oval Los Angeles Memorial Col-iseum is an immense jewel-box of civic memories: college and pro-team touchdowns, professional baseball home runs, rock concerts, presidential speeches,

and the flame-bright

triumphs of two Olympic games.

Here is where Jesse Owens ran, where Jack

Dempsey fought and Sonja Henie skated. Nelson Mandela

and John F. Kennedy spoke here to tens of thousands. Sandy Koufax

struck out 18 bat-ters. The Rolling Stones rocked its seats, and here, Billy Graham and

Pope John Paul II preached.

All that history came about because

a group of civic-minded Angelenos transformed

some barren acreage into a

memorial to war veterans and a

landmark that has withstood both time

and Angelenos’ fondness for demolishing their past.

As the 20th century dawned, the site known as Agricultural Park

had deteriorated into a Sodom of saloons and brothels around an auto

race track.

A Sunday school teacher named William M. Bowen cleaned up the park and, with University of Southern California President George Bovard, proposed a stadium for sports and civic events. The new Coliseum became the property of the city, county and state, each represented equally on the commission that still runs the Coliseum.

Olympic Dreams And College TeamsIt opened in 1923, and was named the Olympic Stadium in hopes of attracting the Olympic Games. The peristyle design evoked ancient Greek and Roman arenas. For the 1984 Olympic Games, the entrance was ornamented with “Olympic Gateway,” heroic male and female nude torsos by art-ist Robert Graham.

In 1923, the football game between USC and Pomona College dug the first divots. A year later, the civic booster William May Garland landed the 1932 Olympic summer games.

A fellow Inter-national Olympic Committee mem-ber praised Garland’s sales-manship when he said, “Billy, I voted for Los Angeles

because I like you personally. But where is Los Angeles? Is it anywhere near Holly-wood?” The 1932 Olympics put Los Angeles — not just Hollywood — on the map.

Even without the Olympics, the Coliseum cre-ated excitement. Post-World War I Los Angeles did not have a major league sport team, so the city’s undi-vided attention turned to what it did have: USC football.

During the 1920s and ‘30s, the USC Tro-jans won five Rose Bowls and two national championships, founding one of the richest traditions in college athletics.

Football soon became the Coliseum’s main-stay. The UCLA Bruins arrived in 1929 and stayed for 52 years. The Rams came from Cleveland in 1946, winning the pro champi-onship five years later.

On June 1945, after the Allied victory in Europe, 105,000 people welcomed Gen. George S. Patton Jr. and Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle. In a mock battle in the Coliseum, searchlights sent pillars of light into the sky, illuminating warplanes flying in for-mation. On the ground, land mines were detonated and tanks rolled through the darkness to simulate Patton’s 3rd Army’s thrust toward Berlin.

Then Came The DodgersIn 1959, more than 92,000 spectators wit-nessed Los Angeles’ first World Series. Fans made such a din that players had to communicate with hand signals.

The Dodgers called the Coliseum home from 1958 until they moved to their own stadium in Chavez Ravine in 1961.

In 1980 and 1981, though, the stadium lost both the Rams and the Bru-ins. The Raiders arrived in 1982 and stayed for 13 years before going back to Oakland, and the Olympics returned to Los Angeles in 1984.

The Coliseum is the only stadium in the world to host two Olympiads, two Super Bowls (I and VII), and a World Series. Today, the Coliseum is both a national and state historic landmark, almost as much a part of Los Angeles’ civic identity as the Hollywood sign.

The day of Billy Graham’s appearance, September 8, 1963. Graham (pictured on the far right) is seen here with (from left) Coliseum General Manager William H. Nicholas, Mr. Graham’s personal assistant Dan Piatt and County Board Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. This event holds the all-time Coliseum attendance record of 134,254.

Opening day for the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Coliseum, April 18, 1958. Comedian Joe E. Brown (center) introduces Dodger skipper Walter Alston (right) to the crowd. Giants manager Bill Rigney looks on. The Dodgers won, 6-5, before a crowd of 78,672.

USC football game, 1940s.

Xth Olympiad opening ceremonies, July 30, 1932.

California vs. USC, 1923.

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