Disney Concert Hall (1999-2003), designed by Pritzker Prize winner Frank O. Gehry. Credit: Gail Ostergren, ©J Paul Getty Trust
Beginning in the 1950s, ongoing urban renewal and planned redevelopment transformed downtown LA’s Bunker Hill area from a Victorian-era residential neighborhood to a major civic, cultural, and financial center. This walking tour will explore Grand Avenue and its environs, the city’s civic and cultural spine. The New Formalist Music Center (Welton Becket and Assoc.,1965-67) is a tour highlight, with stunning views of two seats of civic power – Los Angeles City Hall (1928) and the Department of Water & Power (A.C. Martin and Assoc, 1965). Grand Avenue boasts works by three Pritzker Prize winners – Arata Isozaki’s Postmodern MOCA (1987), and two great Late Modern works: Frank O. Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) and Rafael Moneo’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (2002).
Following the tour, you can enjoy lunch on your own and visit the contemporary art collections at MOCA and The Broad.
This tour complements the Downtown Skyline and Modernism by Moonlight tours, which will highlight the evolution of Bunker Hill’s corporate high-rises and public art.
This is a walking tour, please wear comfortable shoes. Participants can get to the tour starting location (TBD) on their own or leave from USC with a volunteer prior to the tour and take public transit to the site.
$40 USD/person
Note: You must be registered for the conference in order to register for tours. Once you complete your conference registration you will receive an email with links to register for your tours.
About the Tour Leaders
Gail Ostergren is a senior research specialist with Getty Conservation Institute’s Buildings and Sites department, where she works with a number of projects including the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative, the Eames House Conservation Project, and the Los Angeles African American Historic Places Project. Gail earned her PhD in history at UCLA. She serves on the historic preservation commission in West Hollywood, CA, and is a founding board member of the Docomomo US/Southern California chapter. She is one of the authors of the Eames House Conservation Management Plan.
Hannah Simonson is a senior cultural resources planner at Page & Turnbull in Los Angeles. She has worked on a range of projects from documenting the significance of the Transamerica Pyramid to developing design guidelines for Eichler neighborhoods. She received a Master of Science in Historic Preservation at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture in 2017 where her thesis, "Modern Diamong Heights: Dwell-ification and the Challenges of Preserving Modernist, Redevelopment Resources in Diamong Heights, San Francisco," was awarded the Outstanding Thesis in Historic Preservation Her personal and professional research interests include Late Modernism, Postmodernism, and redevelopment and public art. Hannah is the past president of the Docomomo US/Northern California chapter and currently serves on the board of the Docomomo US/SoCal chapter.