LA Downtown

About This Experience

Our Los Angeles city tour was one of those days in which the city seemed to reinvent itself every few miles. Los Angeles is difficult to understand as a single place. Instead of one compact center, it feels like a collection of very different worlds connected by boulevards, freeways and hills. During the course of the day we moved from the theatrical energy of Hollywood to the immaculate streets of Beverly Hills, from the skyscrapers and historic buildings of Downtown Los Angeles to the open hills of Griffith Park, finishing high above the city as thousands of lights began to appear below us. We started in Hollywood, where Los Angeles immediately delivered the version of itself that everyone recognizes from movies and television. Historic theaters stood beneath enormous signs and bright marquees, tourists moved along busy sidewalks, souvenir shops seemed to occupy every available space and names from the film industry appeared everywhere. Even early in the day there was a sense of performance. People posed for photographs, costumed characters wandered among visitors and tour operators advertised glimpses into the lives of movie stars. We walked along the famous boulevard, looking down at the names embedded beneath our feet and then upward at the façades of the historic theaters. Some buildings still preserved the extravagant architectural ambitions of Hollywood's golden age, when going to the cinema was supposed to feel almost ceremonial. Ornate details, towers, decorative roofs and enormous entrances competed for attention with modern advertising and crowds. The contrast was fascinating. Hollywood was glamorous and slightly chaotic at the same time. One minute we were admiring a beautifully preserved theater; the next we were navigating around souvenir stands, performers and groups of people searching for a particular celebrity name on the sidewalk. Behind all the commercial activity, however, it was impossible not to feel the importance of the place in the history of cinema. Movies produced only a few kilometers from here had shaped how generations around the world imagined California and, in many cases, America itself. Naturally we also kept looking toward the hills. The famous Hollywood sign appeared and disappeared between buildings and palm trees, much farther away than it often seems in photographs. Seeing it within the real landscape was interesting because it was not floating above an empty city. Beneath it stretched neighborhoods, streets and hillsides, while behind us Hollywood Boulevard continued with all its noise and activity. After spending enough time among the crowds, we were ready for a complete change of atmosphere, and Los Angeles provided it almost immediately. We headed toward Beverly Hills. The transformation was remarkable. Busy entertainment streets gradually gave way to broad, carefully maintained boulevards lined with enormous palms. Traffic seemed calmer, sidewalks cleaner and gardens increasingly perfect. Elegant houses appeared behind hedges and gates, some resembling Mediterranean villas, others grand estates surrounded by mature trees and immaculate landscaping. Everything felt polished and deliberately understated. Beverly Hills had very little of Hollywood's frantic need to attract attention. The wealth was obvious, but much of it remained hidden behind walls, vegetation and quiet residential streets. We drove slowly through several neighborhoods, admiring the architecture and occasionally wondering what it must cost simply to maintain gardens of that scale in Southern California. Some streets were lined so perfectly with palm trees that they seemed designed specifically for photographs. Their tall trunks created long perspectives toward the hills, while enormous houses appeared between them almost casually. Eventually we reached the famous luxury shopping area, where the residential calm shifted into another kind of theatrical environment. Boutiques occupied beautifully maintained façades, expensive cars moved slowly through the streets and every storefront seemed designed with almost museum-like precision. We walked for a while, enjoying the atmosphere without any serious intention of entering the most intimidating shops. The experience was more about observing this polished version of Los Angeles—the architecture, the palm-lined streets, the elaborate displays and the strange quietness of an area known around the world for luxury. It was fascinating to compare it with Hollywood only a short drive away. Both neighborhoods were connected with celebrity culture, but their personalities could hardly have been more different. Hollywood displayed fame loudly; Beverly Hills seemed to hide it behind hedges and tinted windows. From there we turned toward Downtown Los Angeles. As we approached, the skyline began to rise ahead of us. Glass and steel towers appeared above lower neighborhoods, gradually becoming a dense cluster of skyscrapers. Downtown immediately felt more like the traditional urban center we were accustomed to seeing in other major cities, but even here Los Angeles refused to be simple. Modern high-rises stood beside early twentieth-century office buildings, historic theaters, old markets, museums, civic architecture and streets filled with murals. We started exploring on foot, which completely changed our impression of downtown. From the freeway, the district had appeared to be primarily a collection of towers. At street level it revealed far more layers. Historic façades survived beneath modern buildings, old signs remained painted across brick walls and ornate entrances hinted at periods when downtown had been the unquestioned center of Los Angeles. We moved between streets where modern business towers dominated the view and others that seemed almost unchanged from another era. One of the most enjoyable aspects was looking upward. Decorative cornices, elaborate stonework and old windows often survived above ground floors that had been completely modernized. In some places the architecture felt almost theatrical, as though buildings were competing to demonstrate the optimism and ambition of early Los Angeles. Elsewhere enormous contemporary towers reflected one another in glass, creating a completely different city above the older streets. The cultural side of downtown was equally interesting. Museums and performance venues occupied striking modern buildings, while public plazas and broad stairways created open spaces among the dense streets. We wandered through areas where sculpture and architecture seemed almost inseparable, then turned a corner and found ourselves facing murals covering entire walls. Street art added another visual layer to the district, particularly in areas where former industrial buildings had been converted into galleries, cafés and creative spaces. Large paintings appeared unexpectedly between warehouses, parking lots and newer apartment buildings. Some were colorful and playful, others political or abstract, but together they gave parts of downtown a character very different from the polished neighborhoods we had visited earlier. Los Angeles seemed comfortable allowing luxury, decay, creativity and redevelopment to exist almost side by side. We stopped for something to eat and then continued through the historic parts of downtown. The atmosphere changed from block to block. One street felt dominated by business and offices; another was filled with restaurants and older storefronts. Historic theaters appeared with elaborate façades that recalled a period when downtown entertainment districts attracted enormous crowds. Several entrances were so ornate that we could only imagine how glamorous they must have seemed when illuminated at night. We also found quieter corners where palm trees and small parks softened the urban environment. By mid-afternoon we had spent enough time between buildings and began looking upward again—this time toward the rooftops. One of the pleasures of Downtown Los Angeles is seeing the city from above. Rooftop terraces and elevated viewpoints reveal how unusual the skyline really is. From street level the skyscrapers seem enormous and closely packed, but from higher up the city spreads outward in every direction, quickly becoming a vast low-rise landscape extending toward distant mountains and hills. We stopped at a rooftop viewpoint for a while, enjoying the perspective and trying to recognize the places we had visited earlier. Somewhere beyond the buildings were Beverly Hills and Hollywood, while the hills surrounding Griffith Park marked our final destination for the day. From above, traffic became almost decorative—tiny vehicles flowing along ribbons of freeway rather than the frustrating obstacle it had been when we were sitting among them. The afternoon light was beginning to soften when we left downtown and drove toward Griffith Park. Almost immediately the dense urban landscape began giving way to hills. The road climbed gradually, winding through dry vegetation and open parkland. It was remarkable that such a large natural area existed directly beside one of the largest cities in North America. Trails disappeared into the hills, runners and hikers moved along the roadside and occasional openings between trees offered increasingly broad views of Los Angeles below. The higher we climbed, the more spectacular the city became. Downtown appeared as a compact cluster of towers in the distance, while neighborhoods spread outward in an apparently endless grid. On clearer sections we could make out other parts of the basin and perhaps even hints of the coastline far beyond. Eventually we reached the area around the famous observatory. Its white domes and classical architecture stood prominently on the hillside, creating one of Los Angeles's most recognizable scenes. From the terraces around it, the city opened beneath us in almost every direction. After spending the day moving through individual neighborhoods, this was the first moment when they all seemed to belong to the same place. Hollywood lay below us, Downtown rose farther away and enormous residential districts filled the space between them. Roads and freeways crossed the landscape like illuminated lines waiting for darkness. We explored around the observatory and enjoyed the exhibits before returning outside as sunset approached. The atmosphere had changed. More people had arrived, gathering along walls and terraces with cameras and phones ready. The harsh brightness of the afternoon had disappeared, and the hills were turning golden. The Hollywood sign stood across the landscape, now illuminated by warm low-angle light. Behind us the observatory itself began taking on softer colors. We found a place overlooking the city and waited. Watching Los Angeles from Griffith Park at sunset was the perfect conclusion to the day because it transformed everything we had seen into one enormous panorama. The sun moved lower, casting long shadows across the hills while the urban basin slowly changed from pale gray and green into warmer colors. Downtown's towers reflected the final sunlight and briefly seemed brighter than the sky around them. Then, almost imperceptibly, lights began appearing. At first they were isolated points: a building, a street, a row of houses. Within minutes the entire city started to illuminate. Freeways became glowing streams of red and white, downtown windows formed geometric grids and neighborhoods that had looked indistinct in daylight became enormous fields of light. We stayed well beyond sunset because the transformation was too beautiful to leave. The observatory glowed behind us while below stretched a city that seemed almost limitless. It was difficult to believe that only a few hours earlier we had been walking among those streets, surrounded by buildings and traffic. From this height everything appeared calm and almost orderly. Hollywood's crowds, Beverly Hills' quiet mansions, downtown's…