13 Buildings That Tell LA’s Architectural Story

13 Buildings That Tell LA’s Architectural Story

While LA’s downtown lacks the kind of in-your-face skyscraping architectural monuments you’ll find in towns like Chicago or NYC, a bit of urban spelunking (especially into residential neighborhoods and the surrounding burbopolis) reveals Southern California’s storied architectural past. These 13 buildings range from a fast-food joint to an apartment building to the gleaming Gehry–and are just a point of departure. Tell us about your favorites!

Paying Respects to the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California

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The late architectural historian Reyner Banham called it “The house that really taught the world’s architecture lovers to come to Los Angeles.” The 1949 Eames House is a National Historic Landmark. But where is it? Make an advance appointment through the Eames Foundation and you, too, can visit the near-perfectly preserved Case Study House No. 8 that you know from countless books and photographs. Hiding in a quiet residential street and situated on modest park-like grounds, overhung with eucalyptus, Charles and Ray’s human-scaled house and studio exemplify that moment in modern architecture when mass-produced glass and steel seemed like the perfect postwar kit of p