From hotel rooms to art deco icon: How LA's city hall evolved into that big downtown tower

Los Angeles City Hall is a massive, iconic edifice in downtown, but that wasn’t always the case.

Over the decades, the place where the sausage gets made has evolved, from small rooms to today’s multi-million dollar tower.

The early days

When the city of L.A. incorporated in 1850, it was a bit of a scrappy effort. There were fewer than 2,000 residents, and not nearly as high of a demand for services like we have today.

At the time, there were no city buildings yet. So city employees rented hotel rooms and other spaces for their “office.”

But once those lovely taxes rolled in, officials were keen to set up a more permanent City Hall. From 1853 to 1861, officials rented an adobe house on Spring Street (across the street from the current City Hall) to be its base of operations. For a short stint after, it was the former downtown L.A. Times building (though they came after).

But ultimately, officials went back to the adobe and stayed there for more than 20 years.

Under one roof

It was there until 1888, when city leaders moved into a tall building on South Broadway. This Romanesque Revival Building, accented with marble, red sandstone and terracotta, was a turning point.

Exterior view of the romanesque revival City Hall building on Broadway, just after its completion in 1888.

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Los Angeles Public Library Legacy Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

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The size allowed the city to have most of its municipal departments under the same roof for the first time. The City Council regularly met there, and even the public library service worked out of it.

Explosive growth

City employees worked there for the next 40 years, but by the 1920s, there was a big need for space. The city was rapidly growing and more room was needed to accommodate the people making L.A. run.

Between 1925 and 1928, designers John Parkinson, John Austin and Albert Martin worked on a new building. They wanted to emphasize how central L.A. was to the rest of the state, so the concrete in City Hall was made with sand from each of California’s 58 counties and water from its 21 historical missions.

When it opened its doors in 1928, it was the tallest building in the city. (An ordinance at the time prohibited new buildings from going past 150 feet, but that was overturned a few decades later.) At its opening, there was a big celebration.

The event included a special moment from the White House. On April 26, 1928, then-President Calvin Coolidge turned on the Lindbergh Beacon atop City Hall. But he wasn’t physically present. Instead he did it remotely from Washington, D.C. — via telegraph.

Other city halls

In all, L.A has four city hall spaces, and three are sometimes called neighborhood city halls.

There’s the main one in downtown, then San Pedro, Van Nuys and the Westside on Sawtelle Boulevard.

The Van Nuys City Hall, which looks a lot like its downtown companion, photographed shortly after it was completed in 1932.

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Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

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These satellites, which are at different ends of the city, can serve as a meeting spot, especially when there’s a specific desire to hear from constituents in a particular part of L.A. For example, some of the governance reform committee public meetings were held in Van Nuys City Hall.

While the main City Hall chambers you see on TV are in downtown, a lot of important city business happens elsewhere. These locations can house municipal services, like how the Westside satellite has an office of finance.