GREENING OF CENTURY CITY RIOS CLEMENTI HALE STUDIOS�april 2007

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

WPA LAND USE SURVEY 1939

Santa Monica Blvd:Pacific Electric Railway

Burton Way:Pacific Electric Railway

Venice Blvd: Pacific Electric Railway

Exposition Blvd:Pacific Electric Railway

In 1957-58 Welton Becket designed a master plan for what had been 20th Century Fox’s backlot. The archi-tect for Capitol Records Building, the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and later the Music Center in downtown Los An-geles, among others, Becket was a prominent southern California architect. He proposed a 20th Century city where vehicular traffic was separated from pedestrian work and play. The original plan shown above shows Av-enue of the Stars bifurcating into two roads that would have met with the unrealized Beverly Hills Freeway.

The original plan was not realized and Fox sold the property to developer William Zeckendorf who even-tually sold it to the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). In 1962, Becket, along with collaborators I.M. Pei, Minoru Yamasaki, Charles Luckman, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and Albert C. Martin Associates designed a “city within a city” with residential, busi-ness, hotels, cultural and shopping centers. Life in Century City was designed to take place on an elevated concrete plane and connected via a series of mid-block crossing bridges.

Becket’s Design Team for the 1962 masterplan included sev-eral notable architects.

The 1939 Land Use Survey shows conditions still evident today that continue to define the unique character of Century City: Its late parcelization shown here in contrast to the more finely gridded urban fabric sur-rounding the area is still visible today in its present condition of larger size superblocks.

The area was also central to the major transportation routes of the Pacific Electric railway, which continue today as major transit corridors, improvements along which are integral to the Greening of Century City Plan.

“Movietone City,” as William Fox’s new sound-on-film studio was called, moves to what is now Century City. Fox Film Corporation acquired 300 acres in “open coun-try” west of Beverly Hills. The company merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935.

Tom MixWilliam Fox Darryl Zanuck

AERIAL PHOTO + PLAN. 1958 Century City credit: Los Angeles Public Library

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1937 Twentieth Century Fox Studios. credit: Los Angeles Public Library.

RIOS CLEMENTI HALE STUDIOS �GREENING OF CENTURY CITY april 2007

Century City North Specific Plan The 1981 Specific Plan for Century City North outlined a plan for pedes-trian crossings to connect plaza levels at midblock, to improve the pedestrian condition but continue to emphasize separation of vehicular traffic from pedes-trian activity.

While all new pedestrian crossings were envisioned as bridges (shown on the plan above as arrows), new bridges were never executed. The two grade-sepa-rated crossings at Avenue of the Stars — a bridge at the northern block and an underpass in front of the Century Plaza hotel — had already been built. At-grade, signalized crossings at Century Park East and at Constellation do exist.

The Greening of Century City Pedestrian Connectivity Plan transforms Century City into a sustainable, walk-able neighborhood in the heart of Los Angeles, easily accessible through public transit to Downtown and the greater Los Angeles area.The plan provides an intercon-nected network of pedestrian walkways, bicycle routes and public transit, and better coordinates the pedes-trian experience between street and plaza level. An innovative streetscape design, open space network, and art programming updates Century City from a quintes-sential mid-twentieth century commercial district, into a refreshed, sustainable, walkable community for the twenty-first century.

The site was divided by traffic arteries into superblocks which were in turn subdivided into individual parcels that could be developed whenever the market was ready. Although the master plan was never completely realized as originally planned, many of the elements were built and the area of today’s Specific Plan North is clearly evident in this aerial photo.

By 1971, the Century Towers condominiums designed by I.M. Pei (1965) can be seen at the south end of Avenue of the Stars, the shopping mall (1964) at the north had been built, the curved form of Minoru Yamasaki’s Century Plaza Hotel (1964) is evident, and his Century Plaza “twin towers,” a monument to ALCOA’s alumi-num, were under construction (1975). The pedestrian bridge over Avenue of the Stars had been completed in 1969. The medical building was also completed in 1969 and the hospital would come on line in 1972.

existing pedestrian

bridge

existing pedestrian underpass

AERIAL PHOTO. 1963 Century City. credit: Los Angeles Public Library AERIAL PHOTO. 1971 Century City. credit: Los Angeles Public Library

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Greening of Century City Pedestrian Connectivity Plan