Beverly Wilshire | Los Angeles Conservancy
Photo by Abir Anwar on Flickr

Beverly Wilshire

Now the Beverly Wilshire, Beverly Hills (A Four Seasons Hotel), this landmark was built by real-estate developer Walter McCarty to spice up interest in the then-young city of Beverly Hills.

The hotel rose on the site of a popular auto racetrack that drew huge crowds from 1920 to 1923. (El Camino Drive, on the hotel's east side, was once Speedway Drive.)

The Beverly Wilshire became the most luxurious lodging on the boulevard west of the Ambassador Hotel. The grounds once spanned an entire block, with gardens and later tennis courts used for exhibition matches starring champions such as Pancho Gonzales and Bobby Riggs.

Welton Becket and Associates designed the building's fourteen-story addition in 1969, shortly after Becket died. The addition made the hotel the tallest building in Beverly Hills at the time.

Photo by Hunter Kerhart

Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel

The adaptive reuse of this Renaissance Revival marvel into a modern hotel shows how old buildings can be repurposed while adding to the revitalization of a historic district.
Photo by Adrian Scott Fine/L.A. Conservancy

Harriet and Samuel Freeman House

The Harriet and Samuel Freeman House is the smallest of Frank Lloyd Wright's textile block houses in Southern California. Under the ownership of the Freeman's until 1986, the property gained a rich architectural and cultural legacy.
Metro 417
Photo by Floyd Bariscale

Metro 417

Designed in the Beaux Arts style with Italian Renaissance ornamentation, this 1926 building has dual entrances, one to the offices above, and one to a concourse that served the city's early subway.