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Downtown Los Angeles with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background, as seen from the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
In the summer of 2021, we began asking readers to submit their most pressing questions regarding business in Los Angeles and California.
We then put them to a vote, which allows the readers themselves to decide which question they want us to answer in article form.
Our latest winner was submitted by Javier Barraza, an economics student at California State University, Los Angeles, who asked, “Why doesn’t Los Angeles have a waterfront skyline like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle?” ?”
Not to snub the Santa Monica Clock Tower and other notable waterfront buildings, but Los Angeles’ most recognizable skyscrapers like the Wilshire Grand Center, the US Bank Tower and the Aon Center are approximately 15 minutes away. Pacific miles.
How did LA’s quintessential skyline end up so far from its beaches, unlike many other US cities?
“There’s a saltwater answer and a freshwater answer,” said William Deverell, a professor of history, space science and environmental studies at the University of Southern California.
The saltwater one is that Los Angeles lacked a deepwater port in the years following it was founded. “Trade and port development can encourage cities to build alongside whatever ocean they face,” Deverell added.
“Los Angeles didn’t have that in any particular sense until later on. The freshwater answer is our little, but so important LA River,” he continued. “The river is where indigenous peoples have settled for millennia.”
When Spanish colonial and church forces arrived in what is now the Los Angeles area, they sought out a source of fresh water, as well as the indigenous people. “They found them in the Los Angeles basin, in and around the river,” he added.
Throughout California’s history, indigenous rights were systematically and violently undermined through forced labor, religious conversion efforts, displacement, and attempts to erase them.
“They wanted to implement the mission system and they needed the manpower to do it,” he said. “And then indigenous souls to convert to Christianity. So it was quite a package deal for them, with terrible results.”
The Spanish founded the town of Los Angeles in 1781. They built a plaza, church and other buildings on a site adjacent to a Tongva community, explained Eric Avila, a professor of history, Chicano studies and urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. Angels. “By establishing the plaza there, the conquistadors were trying to maximize their control over the indigenous population.”
So, the Spanish took root in what is now downtown Los Angeles. But then came the Mexican War of Independence, which resulted in that country gaining control of Los Angeles, and the Mexican-American War in the mid-19th century.
“The United States conquers Mexico and seizes its territory,” Ávila added. “In the second half of the 19th century, when Los Angeles became an American city, there was already a bustling commercial center around the old Spanish town.”
Today, the Los Angeles skyline “exists within the original Spanish and Mexican commercial center of Los Angeles,” Avila said. “The old plaza space survived as the historic center of the city.”
The construction of rail lines connecting downtown Los Angeles and the Port of Los Angeles, officially founded in 1907, further reinforced the importance of downtown Los Angeles as a commercial hub.
“That’s where the banks and population centers are,” Deverell said. This resulted in the downtown Los Angeles skyline having a developmental advantage compared to other parts of the city.
The rise of white-collar work in downtown Los Angeles, and the invention of elevators and steel-beam construction, also contributed to the development of the skyline at the turn of the century, according to Deverell.
“I think people were pretty proud of it; ‘Wow, we used to be kind of a dusty crossroads, and now look at us,’” Deverell commented. “It’s one of LA’s ways of telling the world that I was there.”
Known as downtown Los Angeles’s first skyscraper, the 12-story Continental Building was built on Spring Street in the early 20th century.
“While it is no longer considered a skyscraper … it was the tallest building for more than 50 years,” Camille Suarez, an assistant professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles, said by email.
Shortly following the Continental Building was erected to a height of 175 feet, buildings in Los Angeles reached 150 feet in height, with the exception of the Los Angeles City Hall. “When the ban was lifted in 1957, there was a building boom in the downtown area,” he said.
Of course, other factors contributed to the lack of a significant skyline along the Los Angeles coastline; space was one of them. “Unlike cities like New York or Chicago, built up, during the 20th century, developers built out, once water resources and highways allowed the city to expand,” Suarez wrote.
Additionally, landowners shaped, and sometimes blocked, waterfront development. “Landowners and developers prevented the construction of transit infrastructure and skyscrapers along the coast,” he noted.
However, wealth also played a role in creating the downtown Los Angeles skyline. “At the end of the 19th century there were fortunes linked to the manufacture of iron and steel, agriculture [y] oil,” Deverell said. “These people wanted to build a building in their own honor.”
An example? The Petroleum Securities Building, built in 1925 and financed by oil magnate Edward Doheny. “He paid for it, because he was rich,” he added.
Throughout the 20th century, skyscrapers associated with banking and industry dominated downtown. And now, another generation of high-rise buildings claims a place on the Los Angeles skyline; this time, many are designed to serve as residences.
“More people are excited regarding the possibility of living in a high-rise building downtown,” Ávila said. “Downtown took a few hits in 2020 and 2021, but it seems to be coming back.”
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This article was first published in Los Angeles Times in Spanish.