113-503: Los Angeles , often referred to by its initials L.A. , is the most populous city in the U.S. state of California . With an estimated 3,820,914 residents within the city limits as of 2023, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, behind only New York City ; it is also the commercial, financial and cultural center of Southern California . Los Angeles has an ethnically and culturally diverse population, and
226-603: A gross metropolitan product of over $ 1.0 trillion, making it the city with the third-largest GDP in the world, after New York and Tokyo . Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics in 1932 and 1984 , and will also host in 2028 . Despite a business exodus from Downtown Los Angeles since the COVID-19 pandemic , the city's urban core is evolving as a cultural center with the world's largest showcase of architecture designed by Frank Gehry . On September 4, 1781,
339-513: A charter municipality, governed by its own charter, or a general-law municipality (or "code city"), governed by state statute. The first municipality to incorporate was Sacramento on February 27, 1850, while the most recent was Mountain House on July 1, 2024. Eight cities were incorporated before the state's September 9, 1850, admission to the Union. According to the 2020 United States Census,
452-532: A diverse economy with a broad range of industries. Despite a steep exodus of film and television production since the COVID-19 pandemic , Los Angeles is still one of the largest hubs of American film production , the world's largest by revenue; the city is an important site in the history of film . It also has one of the busiest container ports in the Americas. In 2018, the Los Angeles metropolitan area had
565-539: A dozen honorary university degrees (see #Honorary doctorates ). In February 2017, MasterClass announced an online architecture course taught by Gehry that was released that July. Gehry has been involved in exhibition designs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art dating back to the 1960s. In 1965, Gehry designed the exhibition display for the "Art Treasures of Japan" exhibition at the LACMA. This
678-612: A group of 44 settlers known as " Los Pobladores " founded the pueblo (town) they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles , 'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels';. The original name of the settlement is disputed; the Guinness Book of World Records rendered it as "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula "; other sources have shortened or alternate versions of
791-594: A new level of international acclaim when the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in Bilbao , Spain. Hailed by The New Yorker as a "masterpiece of the 20th century", and by legendary architect Philip Johnson as "the greatest building of our time", the museum became famous for its striking yet aesthetically pleasing design and its positive economic effect on the city. Since then, Gehry has regularly won major commissions and established himself as one of
904-529: A practice in Los Angeles that became Frank Gehry and Associates in 1967, then Gehry Partners in 2001. His earliest commissions were in Southern California, where he designed a number of innovative commercial structures such as Santa Monica Place (1980) and residential buildings such as the eccentric Norton House (1984) in Venice, California. Among these works, Gehry's most notable design may be
1017-422: A profit; the other, according to an analysis of contemporary newspaper reports, was the 1932 Summer Olympics , also held in Los Angeles. Racial tensions erupted on April 29, 1992, with the acquittal by a Simi Valley jury of four Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers captured on videotape beating Rodney King , culminating in large-scale riots . In 1994, the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake shook
1130-557: A series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. The Mexican Cession was formalized in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ceded Los Angeles and the rest of Alta California to the United States. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line from New Orleans to Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885. Petroleum
1243-507: A single type, where industrial uses were prohibited. The proscriptions included barns, lumber yards, and any industrial land use employing machine-powered equipment. These laws were enforced against industrial properties after the fact. These prohibitions were in addition to existing activities that were already regulated as nuisances. These included explosives warehousing, gas works, oil drilling, slaughterhouses, and tanneries . Los Angeles City Council also designated seven industrial zones within
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#17328020407201356-603: A trend in California to give places Spanish, or Spanish-sounding, names and pronunciations. In 1908, librarian Charles Fletcher Lummis , who argued for the name's pronunciation with a hard g ( / ɡ / ), reported that there were at least 12 pronunciation variants. In the early 1900s, the Los Angeles Times advocated for pronouncing it Loce AHNG-hayl-ais ( / l oʊ s ˈ ɑː ŋ h eɪ l eɪ s / ), approximating Spanish [los ˈaŋxeles] , by printing
1469-437: Is Mount San Antonio , locally known as Mount Baldy, which reaches 10,064 feet (3,068 m). Further afield, the highest point in southern California is San Gorgonio Mountain , 81 miles (130 km) east of downtown Los Angeles, with a height of 11,503 feet (3,506 m). The Los Angeles River , which is largely seasonal, is the primary drainage channel . It was straightened and lined in 51 miles (82 km) of concrete by
1582-463: Is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings , including his private residence in Santa Monica, California , have become attractions . His works are considered among the most important of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey , leading Vanity Fair to call him "the most important architect of our age". He is also the designer of
1695-648: Is a common problem in this population. Although Serieys et al. 2014 find selection of immune genetics at several loci they do not demonstrate that this produces a real difference which helps the bobcats to survive future mange outbreaks . Los Angeles is subject to earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire . The geologic instability has produced numerous faults , which cause approximately 10,000 earthquakes annually in Southern California, though most of them are too small to be felt. The strike-slip San Andreas Fault system, which sits at
1808-519: Is also a sophisticated classical artist who knows European art history and contemporary sculpture and painting. After the phenomenal success of Gehry's design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao , Spain, critics began referring to the economic and cultural revitalization of cities through iconic, innovative architecture as the "Bilbao effect". In the first 12 months after the museum was opened, an estimated US$ 160 million were added to
1921-452: Is complicated by rugged terrain, which has necessitated having different grids for each of the valleys that Los Angeles covers. Major streets are designed to move large volumes of traffic through many parts of the city, many of which are extremely long; Sepulveda Boulevard is 43 miles (69 km) long, while Foothill Boulevard is over 60 miles (97 km) long, reaching as far east as San Bernardino. Drivers in Los Angeles suffer from one of
2034-439: Is consistent with the California " funk " art movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, which featured the use of inexpensive found objects and nontraditional media such as clay to make serious art. His works always have at least some element of deconstructivism ; he has been called "the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal siding". However, a retrospective exhibit at New York's Whitney Museum in 1988 revealed that he
2147-433: Is divided into many different districts and neighborhoods, some of which had been separately incorporated cities that eventually merged with Los Angeles. These neighborhoods were developed piecemeal, and are well-defined enough that the city has signage which marks nearly all of them. The city's street patterns generally follow a grid plan , with uniform block lengths and occasional roads that cut across blocks. However, this
2260-501: Is expected to continue to drop in the coming years because of aggressive steps to reduce it, which include electric and hybrid cars, improvements in mass transit , and other measures. The number of Stage 1 smog alerts in Los Angeles has declined from over 100 per year in the 1970s to almost zero in the new millennium. Despite improvement, the 2006 and 2007 annual reports of the American Lung Association ranked
2373-487: Is rich in native plant species partly because of its diversity of habitats, including beaches, wetlands , and mountains. The most prevalent plant communities are coastal sage scrub , chaparral shrubland, and riparian woodland . Native plants include: the California poppy , matilija poppy , toyon , Ceanothus , Chamise , Coast Live Oak , sycamore , willow and Giant Wildrye . Many of these native species, such as
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#17328020407202486-567: Is the principal city of a metropolitan area of 12.8 million people (2023). Greater Los Angeles , which includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.3 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending partly through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into
2599-411: The 1916 New York City Zoning Ordinance did. Second, the residential zones did not distinguish types of housing; they treated apartments, hotels, and detached-single-family housing equally. In 1910, Hollywood merged into Los Angeles, with 10 movie companies already operating in the city at the time. By 1921, more than 80 percent of the world's film industry was concentrated in L.A. The money generated by
2712-804: The Army Corps of Engineers to act as a flood control channel. The river begins in the Canoga Park district of the city, flows east from the San Fernando Valley along the north edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, and turns south through the city center, flowing to its mouth in the Port of Long Beach at the Pacific Ocean. The smaller Ballona Creek flows into the Santa Monica Bay at Playa del Rey . Los Angeles
2825-698: The Bois de Boulogne park in Paris, France, which opened to some rave reviews. Also in 2014, Gehry was commissioned by River LA (formerly the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation ), a nonprofit group founded by the city of Los Angeles in 2009 to coordinate river policy, to devise a wide-ranging new plan for the river. In February 2015, the new AU$ 180 million building for the University of Technology Sydney
2938-580: The California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles. In 1989, Gehry received the Pritzker Architecture Prize , where the jury described him: "Always open to experimentation, he has as well a sureness and maturity that resists, in the same way that Picasso did, being bound either by critical acceptance or his successes. His buildings are juxtaposed collages of spaces and materials that make users appreciative of both
3051-591: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra , which was performed in November of that year. In addition to architecture, Gehry has made a line of furniture for Knoll and for Heller Furniture , jewelry for Tiffany & Co. , various household items, sculptures, and even a glass bottle for Wyborowa Vodka . His first line of furniture, produced from 1969 to 1973, was called " Easy Edges ", constructed out of cardboard . Another line of furniture released in
3164-545: The Hillside Stranglers murder cases in 1977–1978. In early 1984, the city surpassed Chicago in population, thus becoming the second largest city in the United States. In 1984, the city hosted the Summer Olympic Games for the second time . Despite being boycotted by 14 Communist countries , the 1984 Olympics became more financially successful than any previous, and the second Olympics to turn
3277-545: The Los Angeles sunflower , have become so rare as to be considered endangered. Mexican Fan Palms , Canary Island Palms , Queen Palms , Date Palms , and California Fan Palms are common in the Los Angeles area, although only the last is native to California, though still not native to the City of Los Angeles. Los Angeles has a number of official flora: The city has an urban population of bobcats ( Lynx rufus ). Mange
3390-573: The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (1986). Gehry has previously collaborated with luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Co., creating six distinct jewelry collections: the Orchid, Fish, Torque, Equus, Axis, and Fold collections. In addition to jewelry, Gehry designed other items, including a distinctive collector's chess set and a series of tableware items, including vases, cups, and bowls for the company. In 2004, Gehry designed
3503-780: The Museum of Pop Culture (2000) in Seattle , Washington; commercial buildings such as the IAC Building (2007) in New York City; and residential buildings, such as Gehry's first skyscraper, the Beekman Tower at 8 Spruce Street (2011) in New York City. Gehry's recent major international works include the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology Sydney , completed in 2014, and
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3616-674: The National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States. Gehry's influence extends beyond architecture; he has designed furniture, jewelry, and liquor bottles. Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto , Ontario, to parents Sadie Thelma (née Kaplanski/Caplan) and Irving Goldberg. His father was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish parents, and his mother
3729-768: The Russians , and other Europeans began exploring and colonizing the area in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the Spanish establishing its first California mission at what is now San Diego in 1769. After the Mexican Cession of 1848, the California Gold Rush brought worldwide attention to the area. The growth of the movie industry in Los Angeles , high tech in San Francisco and Silicon Valley , tourism , agriculture , and other areas in
3842-562: The San Fernando Valley , with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to its east. It covers about 469 square miles (1,210 km), and is the county seat of Los Angeles County , which is the most populous county in the United States with an estimated 9.86 million residents as of 2022. It is the third-most visited city in the U.S. with over 2.7 million visitors as of 2023. The area that became Los Angeles
3955-600: The United States Army . In the fall of 1956, he moved his family to Cambridge, Massachusetts , where he studied city planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design . He left before completing the program, disheartened and "underwhelmed". His progressive ideas about socially responsible architecture were under-realized, and the final straw occurred when he sat in on a discussion of one professor's "secret project in progress"—a palace that he
4068-733: The University of California at Los Angeles , the University of Toronto , Columbia University , the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich , and at Yale University , where he still teaches as of 2017. Though he is often referred to as a " starchitect ", he has repeatedly expressed his disdain for the term, insisting he is only an architect. Steve Sample , President of the University of Southern California , told Gehry that "...After George Lucas , you are our most prominent graduate". As of December 2013 , Gehry has received over
4181-499: The respelling under its masthead for several years. This did not find favor. Since the 1930s, / l ɔː s ˈ æ n dʒ əl ə s / has been most common. In 1934, the United States Board on Geographic Names decreed that this pronunciation be used by the federal government. This was also endorsed in 1952 by a "jury" appointed by Mayor Fletcher Bowron to devise an official pronunciation. Common pronunciations in
4294-405: The 1970s with his distinctive style that blended everyday materials with complex, dynamic structures. Gehry's approach to architecture has been described as deconstructivist, though he himself resists categorization. Throughout his career, Gehry has received numerous awards and honors, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, considered the field's highest honor. He has also been awarded
4407-505: The 20th century, Los Angeles substantially reduced the amount of housing that could be built by drastically downzoning the city. In 1960, the city had a total zoned capacity for approximately 10 million people. By 1990, that capacity had fallen to 4.5 million as a result of policy decisions to ban housing through zoning. Racial tensions led to the Watts riots in 1965, resulting in 34 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. In 1969, California became
4520-455: The Angels'. The present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or ( New Spain ) settlers were mestizo or mulatto , a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in
4633-520: The Basque economy. Indeed, over $ 3.5 billion have been added to the Basque economy since the building opened. In subsequent years there have been many attempts to replicate this effect through large-scale eye-catching architectural commissions that have been both successful and unsuccessful, such as Daniel Libeskind 's expansion of the Denver Art Museum and buildings by Gehry himself, such as
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4746-807: The Chau Chak Wing, with its 320,000 bricks in "sweeping lines", described as "10 out of 10" on a scale of difficulty. An ongoing project is the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates. Other significant projects such as the Mirvish Towers in Toronto, and a multi-decade renovation of the Philadelphia Museum of Art , are currently in the design stage. In October 2013, Gehry
4859-1232: The Grand Avenue Project, a concert hall for the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles , and an office building for Warner Bros. , The Architect's Newspaper stated that "Seventy-four years after he moved there from his native Toronto, L.A. is looking more and more like Gehry Country." Said to "defy categorisation", Gehry's work reflects a spirit of experimentation coupled with a respect for the demands of professional practice, and has remained largely unaligned with broader stylistic tendencies or movements. With his earliest educational influences rooted in modernism , Gehry's work has sought to escape modernist stylistic tropes while remaining interested in some of its underlying transformative agendas. Continually working between given circumstances and unanticipated materializations, he has been assessed as someone who "made us produce buildings that are fun, sculpturally exciting, good experiences", although his approach may become "less relevant as pressure mounts to do more with less". Gehry's style at times seems unfinished or even crude, but his work
4972-921: The LACMA, followed soon after by the "German Expressionist Sculpture Exhibition" in 1983. In 1991–92, Gehry designed the installation of the landmark exhibition "Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany", which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago , the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and the Altes Museum in Berlin. Gehry
5085-628: The Los Angeles area include the 1933 Long Beach , 1971 San Fernando , 1987 Whittier Narrows , and the 1994 Northridge events. All but a few are of low intensity and are not felt. The USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast , which models earthquake occurrence in California. Parts of the city are also vulnerable to tsunamis ; harbor areas were damaged by waves from Aleutian Islands earthquake in 1946, Valdivia earthquake in 1960, Alaska earthquake in 1964, Chile earthquake in 2010 and Japan earthquake in 2011. The city
5198-502: The Los Angeles area was the headquarters of six of the country's major aircraft manufacturers ( Douglas Aircraft Company , Hughes Aircraft , Lockheed , North American Aviation , Northrop Corporation , and Vultee ). During the war, more aircraft were produced in one year than in all the pre-war years since the Wright brothers flew the first airplane in 1903, combined. Manufacturing in Los Angeles skyrocketed, and as William S. Knudsen , of
5311-546: The Los Angeles region. In 1846, during the wider Mexican-American war , marines from the United States occupied the pueblo. This resulted in the siege of Los Angeles where 150 Mexican militias fought the occupiers which eventually surrendered. Mexican rule ended during following the American Conquest of California , part of the larger Mexican-American War . Americans took control from the Californios after
5424-683: The Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, Los Angeles suffers from air pollution in the form of smog. The Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley are susceptible to atmospheric inversion , which holds in the exhausts from road vehicles, airplanes, locomotives, shipping, manufacturing, and other sources. The smog season lasts from approximately May to October. While other large cities rely on rain to clear smog, Los Angeles gets only 15 inches (380 mm) of rain each year: pollution accumulates over many consecutive days. Issues of air quality in Los Angeles and other major cities led to
5537-890: The Motorcycle" exhibition opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum with its installation designed by Gehry. This exhibition subsequently traveled to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Guggenheim Las Vegas . In 2014, he curated an exhibition of photography by his close friend and businessman Peter Arnell that ran from March 5 through April 1 at Milk Studios Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1983, Gehry created
5650-406: The National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC has had numerous delays during the approval process with the United States Congress , it was finally approved in 2014 with a modified design. In 2014, two significant, long-awaited museums designed by Gehry opened: the Biomuseo , a biodiversity museum in Panama City , Panama; and the Fondation Louis Vuitton , a modern art museum in
5763-595: The National Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial . Gehry is known for his postmodern designs and use of bold, unconventional forms and materials. His most famous works include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. These buildings are characterized by their sculptural, often undulating exteriors and innovative use of materials such as titanium and stainless steel. Born in Toronto, Gehry moved to Los Angeles in 1947 and established his architectural practice there in 1962. He rose to prominence in
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#17328020407205876-428: The National Defense Advisory Commission put it, "We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible." After the end of World War II Los Angeles grew more rapidly than ever, sprawling into the San Fernando Valley . The expansion of the state owned Interstate Highway System during the 1950s and 1960s helped propel suburban growth and signaled
5989-404: The San Fernando Valley. Other hilly parts of Los Angeles include the Mt. Washington area north of Downtown, eastern parts such as Boyle Heights , the Crenshaw district around the Baldwin Hills , and the San Pedro district. Surrounding the city are much higher mountains. Immediately to the north lie the San Gabriel Mountains , which is a popular recreation area for Angelenos. Its high point
6102-451: The Southern Californian coast, is subject to a late spring/early summer weather phenomenon called " June Gloom ". This involves overcast or foggy skies in the morning that yield to sun by early afternoon. More recently, statewide droughts in California have further strained the city's water security . Downtown Los Angeles averages 14.67 in (373 mm) of precipitation annually, mainly occurring between November and March, generally in
6215-481: The Spanish founded the Pueblo de Los Ángeles . Iyáangẚ has also been translated as "the valley of smoke". Maritime explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542, while on an official military exploring expedition, as he was moving northward along the Pacific coast from earlier colonizing bases of New Spain in Central and South America. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí reached
6328-417: The United Kingdom include / l ɒ s ˈ æ n dʒ ɪ l iː z , - l ɪ z , - l ɪ s / loss AN -jil-eez, -iz, -iss . Phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis described the most common one, / l ɒ s ˈ æ n dʒ ɪ l iː z / , as a spelling pronunciation based on analogy to Greek words ending in -es , "reflecting a time when the classics were familiar if Spanish
6441-595: The United States, settling in California. He got a job driving a delivery truck and studied at Los Angeles City College . He went on to graduate from the University of Southern California 's School of Architecture. During that time, he became a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi . According to Gehry, "I was a truck driver in L.A., going to City College, and I tried radio announcing, which I wasn't very good at. I tried chemical engineering, which I wasn't very good at and didn't like, and then I remembered. You know, somehow I just started wracking my brain about, 'What do I like?' Where
6554-451: The almost universally well-received Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the more controversial Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. Though some link the concept of the Bilbao effect to the notion of starchitecture, Gehry has consistently rejected the label of a starchitect . Though much of Gehry's work has been well-received, its reception was not always positive. Art historian Hal Foster reads Gehry's architecture as, primarily, in
6667-437: The birthplace of the Internet, as the first ARPANET transmission was sent from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park . In 1973, Tom Bradley was elected as the city's first African American mayor, serving for five terms until retiring in 1993. Other events in the city during the 1970s included the Symbionese Liberation Army 's South Central standoff in 1974 and
6780-497: The boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate , passes through the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The segment of the fault passing through Southern California experiences a major earthquake roughly every 110 to 140 years, and seismologists have warned about the next "big one", as the last major earthquake was the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake . The Los Angeles basin and metropolitan area are also at risk from blind thrust earthquakes . Major earthquakes that have hit
6893-426: The boundary of a Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csb on the coast, Csa otherwise). Daytime temperatures are generally temperate all year round. In winter, they average around 68 °F (20 °C). Autumn months tend to be hot, with major heat waves a common occurrence in September and October, while the spring months tend to be cooler and experience more precipitation. Los Angeles has plenty of sunshine throughout
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#17328020407207006-401: The city as the most polluted in the country with short-term particle pollution and year-round particle pollution. In 2008, the city was ranked the second most polluted and again had the highest year-round particulate pollution. The city met its goal of providing 20 percent of the city's power from renewable sources in 2010. The American Lung Association's 2013 survey ranks the metro area as having
7119-401: The city is 342 miles (550 km). Los Angeles is both flat and hilly. The highest point in the city proper is Mount Lukens at 5,074 ft (1,547 m), located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains at the north extent of the Crescenta Valley . The eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains stretches from Downtown to the Pacific Ocean and separates the Los Angeles Basin from
7232-447: The city, causing $ 12.5 billion in damage and 72 deaths. The century ended with the Rampart scandal , one of the most extensive documented cases of police misconduct in American history. In 2002, Mayor James Hahn led the campaign against secession, resulting in voters defeating efforts by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood to secede from the city. In 2022 , Karen Bass became the city's first female mayor , making Los Angeles
7345-420: The city. However, between 1908 and 1915, the Los Angeles City Council created various exceptions to the broad proscriptions that applied to these three residential zones, and as a consequence, some industrial uses emerged within them. There are two differences between the 1908 Residence District Ordinance and later zoning laws in the United States. First, the 1908 laws did not establish a comprehensive zoning map as
7458-518: The continued growth of the city. Because of clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent cities and communities felt compelled to join Los Angeles. Los Angeles created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones. The new ordinance established three residential zones of
7571-412: The demise of the city's privately owned electrified rail system , once the world's largest. As a consequence of World War II, suburban growth, and population density, many amusement parks were built and operated in this area. An example is Beverly Park , which was located at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega before being closed and substituted by the Beverly Center . In the second half of
7684-399: The difference between the average daily low and the average daily high is over 30 °F (17 °C). The average annual temperature of the sea is 63 °F (17 °C), from 58 °F (14 °C) in January to 68 °F (20 °C) in August. Hours of sunshine total more than 3,000 per year, from an average of 7 hours of sunshine per day in December to an average of 12 in July. Due to
7797-447: The ensuing decades fueled the creation of a $ 3 trillion economy as of 2018 , which would rank fifth in the world if the state were a sovereign nation. California is divided into 58 counties and contains 483 municipalities . One, San Francisco, is a consolidated city-county . California law makes no distinction between "city" and "town", and municipalities may use either term in their official names. They can be organized as either
7910-411: The first Fish Lamps were fabricated between 1984 and 1986. They employed wire armatures molded into fish shapes, onto which shards of plastic laminate ColorCore are individually glued. Since the creation of the first lamp in 1984, the fish has become a recurrent motif in Gehry's work, most notably in the Fish Sculpture at La Vila Olímpica del Poblenou in Barcelona (1989–92) and Standing Glass Fish for
8023-407: The form of moderate rain showers, but sometimes as heavy rainfall during winter storms. Rainfall is usually higher in the hills and coastal slopes of the mountains because of orographic uplift. Summer days are usually rainless. Rarely, an incursion of moist air from the south or east can bring brief thunderstorms in late summer, especially to the mountains. The coast gets slightly less rainfall, while
8136-480: The historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street , the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, and the pueblo now existed within the new Mexican Republic . During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles the regional capital of Alta California . By this time, the new republic introduced more secularization acts within
8249-499: The industry kept the city insulated from much of the economic loss suffered by the rest of the country during the Great Depression . By 1930, the population surpassed one million. In 1932, the city hosted the Summer Olympics . During World War II Los Angeles was a major center of wartime manufacturing, such as shipbuilding and aircraft. Calship built hundreds of Liberty Ships and Victory Ships on Terminal Island, and
8362-520: The inland and mountain areas get considerably more. Years of average rainfall are rare. The usual pattern is a year-to-year variability, with a short string of dry years of 5–10 in (130–250 mm) rainfall, followed by one or two wet years with more than 20 in (510 mm). Wet years are usually associated with warm water El Niño conditions in the Pacific, dry years with cooler water La Niña episodes. A series of rainy days can bring floods to
8475-568: The largest U.S. city to have ever had a woman as mayor. Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games , making Los Angeles the third city to host the Olympics three times. The city of Los Angeles covers a total area of 502.7 square miles (1,302 km), comprising 468.7 square miles (1,214 km) of land and 34.0 square miles (88 km) of water. The city extends for 44 miles (71 km) from north to south and for 29 miles (47 km) from east to west. The perimeter of
8588-429: The largest municipality by population and land area is Los Angeles with 3,898,747 residents and 469.49 square miles (1,216.0 km ). Amador City is the smallest municipality by population with 200 people and the smallest by land area at 0.31 square miles (0.80 km ). ‡ Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry CC FAIA ( / ˈ ɡ ɛər i / GAIR -ee ; né Goldberg ; born February 28, 1929)
8701-513: The longer name. The local English pronunciation of the name of the city has varied over time. A 1953 article in the journal of the American Name Society asserts that the pronunciation / l ɔː s ˈ æ n dʒ əl ə s / lawss AN -jəl-əs was established following the 1850 incorporation of the city and that since the 1880s the pronunciation / l oʊ s ˈ æ ŋ ɡ əl ə s / lohss ANG -gəl-əs emerged from
8814-487: The lowest is 28 °F (−2 °C), on January 4, 1949. Within the City of Los Angeles, the highest temperature ever officially recorded is 121 °F (49 °C), on September 6, 2020, at the weather station at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Woodland Hills . During autumn and winter, Santa Ana winds sometimes bring much warmer and drier conditions to Los Angeles, and raise wildfire risk. Owing to geography, heavy reliance on automobiles, and
8927-504: The lowlands and mudslides to the hills, especially after wildfires have denuded the slopes. Both freezing temperatures and snowfall are extremely rare in the city basin and along the coast, with the last occurrence of a 32 °F (0 °C) reading at the downtown station being January 29, 1979; freezing temperatures occur nearly every year in valley locations while the mountains within city limits typically receive snowfall every winter. The greatest snowfall recorded in downtown Los Angeles
9040-545: The mountainous terrain of the surrounding region, the Los Angeles area contains a large number of distinct microclimates , causing extreme variations in temperature in close physical proximity to each other. For example, the average July maximum temperature at the Santa Monica Pier is 70 °F (21 °C) whereas it is 95 °F (35 °C) in Canoga Park, 15 miles (24 km) away. The city, like much of
9153-685: The nation's worst smog, and fourth in both short-term and year-round pollution amounts. List of municipalities in California California is a state located in the Western United States . It is the most populous state and the third largest by area after Alaska and Texas . According to the 2020 United States Census , California has 39,538,223 inhabitants and 155,779.22 square miles (403,466.3 km ) of land. California has been inhabited by numerous Native American peoples since antiquity. The Spanish ,
9266-725: The open-air Jay Pritzker Pavilion (2004) in Chicago 's Millennium Park ; and the understated New World Center (2011) in Miami Beach , which the LA Times called "a piece of architecture that dares you to underestimate it or write it off at first glance." His other notable works include academic buildings such as the Stata Center (2004) at MIT , and the Peter B. Lewis Library (2008) at Princeton University ; museums such as
9379-598: The over 2,000 sq ft (190 m ) "David Cabin" shows features that were to become synonymous with Gehry's later work, including beams protruding from the exterior sides, vertical-grain douglas fir detail, and exposed unfinished ceiling beams. It also shows strong Asian influences, stemming from his earliest inspirations, such as the Shosoin treasure house in Nara , Japan. In 1961, Gehry moved to Paris, where he worked for architect Andre Remondet. In 1962, he established
9492-513: The passage of early national environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act . When the act was passed, California was unable to create a State Implementation Plan that would enable it to meet the new air quality standards, largely because of the level of pollution in Los Angeles generated by older vehicles. More recently, the state of California has led the nation in working to limit pollution by mandating low-emission vehicles . Smog
9605-484: The present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel , the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of 44 settlers known as " Los Pobladores " founded the pueblo (town) they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles , 'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of
9718-632: The renovation of his own Santa Monica residence. Originally built in 1920 and purchased by Gehry in 1977, it features a metallic exterior wrapped around the original building that leaves many of the original details visible. Gehry still resides there. Other of Gehry's buildings completed during the 1980s include the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium (1981) in San Pedro , and the California Aerospace Museum (1984) at
9831-535: The rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and became part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood . The discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The city was further expanded with the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, which delivers water from Eastern California . Los Angeles has
9944-563: The rest of the surrounding landscape. Most construction is done in separate units, rather than wall-to-wall . However, Downtown Los Angeles itself has many buildings over 30 stories, with fourteen over 50 stories, and two over 70 stories, the tallest of which is the Wilshire Grand Center . Los Angeles has a two-season semi-arid climate ( Köppen : BSh ) with dry summers and very mild winters, but it receives more annual precipitation than most semi-arid climates, narrowly missing
10057-459: The service of corporate branding . Criticism of his work includes complaints over design flaws that the buildings waste structural resources by creating functionless forms, do not seem to belong in their surroundings or enhance the public context of their locations, and are apparently designed without taking into account the local climate. Moreover, socialist magazine Jacobin pointed out that Gehry's work can be summed up as architecture for
10170-402: The spring of 1992 is " Bentwood Furniture ". Each piece is named after a different hockey term. He was first introduced to making furniture in 1954 while serving in the U.S. Army , where he designed furniture for the enlisted soldiers. In many of his designs, Gehry is inspired by fish. "It was by accident I got into the fish image", claimed Gehry. One thing that sparked his interest in fish
10283-543: The stage design for Lucinda Childs ' dance Available Light , set to music by John Adams . It premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles at the "Temporary Contemporary", and was subsequently seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House in New York City and the Theatre de la Ville in Paris. The set consisted of two levels angled in relation to each other, with a chain-link backdrop. The piece
10396-591: The super-wealthy, in the sense that it is expensive, not resourceful, and does not serve the interests of the overwhelming majority. The article criticized Gehry's statement, "In the world we live in, 98 percent of what gets built and designed today is pure shit". In January 2011, Gehry joined the University of Southern California (USC) faculty, as the Judge Widney Professor of Architecture. He has since continued in this role at his alma mater. He has also held teaching positions at Harvard University ,
10509-737: The theatre and the back-stage, simultaneously revealed." Gehry continued to design other notable buildings in California, such as the Chiat/Day Building (1991) in Venice, in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg , which is well known for its massive sculpture of binoculars. He also began receiving larger national and international commissions, including his first European commission, the Vitra International Furniture Manufacturing Facility and Design Museum in Germany, completed in 1989. It
10622-427: The world's most notable architects. His best-received works include several concert halls for classical music. The boisterous, curvaceous Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in downtown Los Angeles is the centerpiece of the neighborhood's revitalization; the Los Angeles Times called it "the most effective answer to doubters, naysayers, and grumbling critics an American architect has ever produced". Gehry also designed
10735-634: The worst rush hour periods in the world, according to an annual traffic index by navigation system maker, TomTom . LA drivers spend an additional 92 hours in traffic each year. During the peak rush hour, there is 80% congestion, according to the index. Los Angeles is often characterized by the presence of low-rise buildings, in contrast to New York City. Outside of a few centers such as Downtown , Warner Center , Century City , Koreatown , Miracle Mile , Hollywood, and Westwood , skyscrapers and high-rise buildings are not common in Los Angeles. The few skyscrapers built outside of those areas often stand out above
10848-688: The year, with an average of only 35 days with measurable precipitation annually. Temperatures in the coastal basin exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on a dozen or so days in the year, from one day a month in April, May, June and November to three days a month in July, August, October and to five days in September. Temperatures in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys are considerably warmer. Temperatures are subject to substantial daily swings; in inland areas
10961-495: Was 2.0 inches (5 cm) on January 15, 1932. While the most recent snowfall occurred in February 2019, the first snowfall since 1962, with snow falling in areas adjacent to Los Angeles as recently as January 2021. Brief, localized instances of hail can occur on rare occasions, but are more common than snowfall. At the official downtown station, the highest recorded temperature is 113 °F (45 °C) on September 27, 2010, while
11074-508: Was I? What made me excited? And I remembered art, that I loved going to museums and I loved looking at paintings, loved listening to music. Those things came from my mother, who took me to concerts and museums. I remembered Grandma and the blocks, and just on a hunch, I tried some architecture classes." Gehry graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1954. He then spent time away from architecture in numerous other jobs, including service in
11187-462: Was a Polish Jewish immigrant born in Łódź . A creative child, he was encouraged by his grandmother, Leah Caplan, with whom he built little cities out of scraps of wood. With these scraps from her husband's hardware store, she entertained him for hours, building imaginary houses and futuristic cities on the living room floor. Gehry's use of corrugated steel , chain-link fencing , unpainted plywood , and other utilitarian or "everyday" materials
11300-693: Was appointed joint architect with Foster + Partners to design the High Street phase of the development of Battersea Power Station in London, Gehry's first project there. In recent years, some of Gehry's more prominent designs have failed to go forward. In addition to unrealized designs for the Corcoran Art Gallery expansion in Washington, DC, and a new Guggenheim museum near the South Street Seaport in New York City, Gehry
11413-446: Was asked to design an exhibition on the work of Alexander Calder at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Resnick Pavilion, again invited by the museum's curator Stephanie Barron. The exhibition began on November 24, 2013, and ran through July 27, 2014. In addition to his long-standing involvement with exhibition design at the LACMA, Gehry has also designed numerous exhibition installations with other institutions. In 1998, "The Art of
11526-632: Was built 1 foot (0.30 m) taller than the nearby Trump Building , which until then was New York City's tallest residential building. Notable Gehry-designed buildings completed in the 2020s include the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC and the LUMA Arles museum in France. In 2021, noting Gehry's progress on an increasing number of significant projects in his hometown, including
11639-610: Was designing for right-wing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973). Gehry returned to Los Angeles to work for Victor Gruen Associates , with whom he had apprenticed while at USC. In 1957, at age 28, he was given the chance to design his first private residence with friend and old classmate Greg Walsh . Construction was done by another neighbor across the street from his wife's family, Charlie Sockler. Built in Idyllwild, California for his wife Anita's family neighbor Melvin David,
11752-432: Was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, and by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000, putting pressure on the city's water supply . The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland , ensured
11865-455: Was followed soon after by the exhibition design for the "Assyrian Reliefs" show in 1966 and the "Billy Al Bengston Retrospective" in 1968. The LACMA then had Gehry design the installation for the "Treasures of Tutankhamen" exhibition in 1978 followed by the "Avant-Garde in Russia 1910–1930" exhibition in 1980. The subsequent year, Gehry designed the exhibition for "Seventeen Artists in the '60s" at
11978-514: Was not". The settlement of Indigenous Californians in the modern Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley was dominated by the Tongva (now also known as the Gabrieleño since the era of Spanish colonization). The historic center of Tongva power in the region was the settlement of Yaanga ( Tongva : Iyáangẚ ), meaning "place of the poison oak ", which would one day be the site where
12091-655: Was notoriously dropped by developer Bruce Ratner from the Pacific Park (Brooklyn) redevelopment project, and in 2014 as the designer of the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center in New York City. Some stalled projects have recently shown progress: After many years and a dismissal, Gehry was recently reinstated as architect for the Grand Avenue Project in Los Angeles, and though his controversial design of
12204-616: Was officially opened, whose façade has more than 320,000 hand-placed bricks and glass slabs. Gehry said he would not design a building like the "crumpled paper bag" again. Gehry told the French newspaper La Croix in November 2016 that President of France François Hollande had assured him he could relocate to France if Donald Trump was elected President of the United States . The following month, Gehry said that he had no plans to move. Trump and he exchanged words in 2010 when Gehry's 8 Spruce Street , originally known as Beekman Tower ,
12317-599: Was originally inhabited by the indigenous Tongva people and later claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542. The city was founded on September 4, 1781, under Spanish governor Felipe de Neve , on the village of Yaanga . It became a part of the First Mexican Empire in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence . In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War , Los Angeles and
12430-578: Was partly inspired by spending Saturday mornings at his grandfather's hardware store. He spent time drawing with his father, and his mother introduced him to the world of art. "So the creative genes were there", Gehry says. "But my father thought I was a dreamer, I wasn't gonna amount to anything. It was my mother who thought I was just reticent to do things. She would push me." He was given the Hebrew name "Ephraim" by his grandfather, but used it only at his bar mitzvah . In 1947, Gehry's family immigrated to
12543-575: Was revived in 2015, and was performed, among other places, in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where it was presented by FringeArts , which commissioned the revival. In 2012, Gehry designed the set for the Los Angeles Philharmonic 's opera production of Don Giovanni , performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. In April 2014, Gehry designed a set for an "exploration of the life and career of Pierre Boulez " by
12656-813: Was soon followed by other major commissions including the Frederick Weisman Museum of Art (1993) in Minneapolis , Minnesota; the Cinémathèque Française (1994) in Paris, originally The American Center in Paris; and the Dancing House (1996) in Prague . From 1994 to 1996 a couple buildings by Gehry for a Public housing project were realized in Goldstein, part of Frankfurt-Schwanheim (1994) In 1997, Gehry vaulted to
12769-461: Was the fact that his colleagues were recreating Greek temples. He said, "Three hundred million years before man was fish....if you gotta go back, and you're insecure about going forward...go back three hundred million years ago. Why are you stopping at the Greeks? So, I started drawing fish in my sketchbook, and then I started to realize that there was something in it." As a result of his fascination,
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