Los Angeles and Its Newspaper, Explained by Three Buildings

Three important buildings, designed by three important architects, tell the story of modern Los Angeles and its newspaper.

The first was designed by Gordon B. Kaufmann and built in 1935 as a new and modern home for The Los Angeles Times, and its distinctive art deco style has been an iconic fixture of the city’s skyline.

The second, designed by Rowland H. Crawford, is an office tower built in 1948 as the home for a new afternoon newspaper. That project failed, partly because the old street cars went away as the city embraced the automobile, but the building endures.

The third was designed by William L. Pereira, a 1973 office building to accommodate the top brass of the Times Mirror Co., the newspaper’s corporate parent. It was built at a time when the paper was growing under the publisher, Otis Chandler, who expanded the paper’s coverage, elevating it into the upper echelon of the country’s great newspapers.

Together they are known as Times Mirror Square, and now that the staff of The Los Angeles Times is moving to another section of the county, conservationists are fighting to save the building from development plans by the complex’s owner, the Onni Group.

“These three buildings tell the story not just of The Los Angeles Times but of Los Angeles,” said Richard Schave, a local conservationist and historian who runs the tour company Esotouric.

Schave has spent the past 10 years, working alongside Harry Chandler, Otis Chandler’s son, preparing an application to gain monument status for the buildings, which wouldn’t necessarily prevent Omni from developing the site but would restrict it.

He said he started the process shortly after Sam Zell, the Chicago businessman, took ownership of the paper. He immediately sensed that paper — and the building — was not in good hands.

It was just a coincidence that the city’s Office of Historic Resources accepted the application only recently, just as the newspaper was packing up to move. (The city’s Cultural Heritage Commission will hear the case July 19.)

Struggles over the future of old buildings in Los Angeles can be long, nasty and complicated affairs, pitting historians and conservationists against deep-pocketed property developers.

One of the most famous cases was a battle in the 1990s over the future of the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. In that case, a New York real estate developer, Donald Trump, was thwarted in his aim to build the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.