Roxbury Plaza | Los Angeles Conservancy
Photo by Lynne Tucker

Roxbury Plaza

Of the many high-rise office buildings that shot up on Wilshire Boulevard during the postwar period, few are as graceful as the Manufacturers Bank building in Beverly Hills.

Completed in 1974, the thirteen-story tower (also known as Roxbury Plaza) is an undulating parallelogram on a corner in downtown Beverly Hills. It was designed by architect Anthony Lumsden of Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall (DMJM), who along with colleague Cesar Pelli was renowned for his innovative glass-skin designs.

The Late Modern-style Manufacturers Bank building illustrates Lumsden’s hallmark design elements of aerodynamic curves, reversed mullions, and vast expanses of glass curtain walls. It relates strongly to its site, with its curving walls bending in response to its corner location, the tallest tower standing at the intersection and the rest of the building flowing wave-like behind it.

Lumsden used a cladding of dark-tinted mirrored glass to set the tower apart from the other high-rise office buildings dominating this part of Beverly Hills. Its colors change with the weather but remain subdued in the service of the curving, balanced structure.

For all its elegance and size, the Manufacturers Bank building was remarkably cost-efficient, with its construction costing no more than $16 per square foot.

Photo by Flora Chou/L.A. Conservancy

National Bank of Whittier Building

Clad in glazed terra cotta with classically inspired detailing and leaded-glass transoms, this six-story building by father-and-son architects John and Donald B. Parkinson exemplifies the Beaux Arts style.
Photo courtesy Architectural Resources Group

Compton City Hall and Civic Center

The plaza’s focal point, a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., is a large sculpture of angled white planes arranged in a circle and converging at the top.
Fox Plaza
Photo by Tristan Reville on Flickr

Fox Plaza

Before its starring role as Nakatomi Plaza in the Bruce Willis smash hit "Die Hard," Fox Plaza was better known as one of the most architecturally appealing buildings to rise in the city during the 1980s.