Los Angeles City Hall

This guide to Los Angeles City Hall traces how a city government exploited a loophole in its own height law to build a thirty-two-floor art deco tower far above the legal limit. It lingers on the tower's Hollywood-scale dedication in April 1928, staged by showman Sid Grauman with a mile-long parade and Irving Berlin performing, and on the aviator whose name went on the beacon atop the spire. You'll also hear how concrete from all fifty-eight California counties went into building it, before the story turns to the tower's second life as a fixture of film and television.