Tourist places in Los Angeles |
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| Thursday, 01 May 2008 | |
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Back To Tourist place in CaliforniaHistory of Los Angeles
Los Angeles - J Paul Getty Museum
The museum complex as drawn up by the architect Richard Meier is - judging from its huge dimensions of 0.75sq.mi/1.9sq.km and the astronomical building costs - a truly American project. The 110 acre complex is located at 1200 Getty Center Drive of the San Diego Freeway in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The museum was created by the oil magnate J Paul Getty who was born on December 15, 1892. The collection was originally housed in a ranch house in Malibu which Getty purchased in 1946. The collections of the museum range from Greek and Roman antiquities to contemporary art. The major collections are Antiquities, Decorative Arts, Drawings, Manuscripts, Paintings, Photographs and Sculpture and Works of Art The center has several buildings. The museum is in the main building, the East Building holds the Getty Conservation Institute, the North Building includes the Getty Information Institute and the Harold M Williams Auditorium is used for lectures performances and other programs. One of Los Angeles' most important sights, the Universal Studios (Hollywood Freeway, exit Linkershim Blvd.), was created in 1915 by the German-American film pioneer Carl Laemmle on the site of a chicken farm. At that time the part of town now known as Universal City was still wild, hilly countryside. Initially Laemmle built only two sets, on which the first silent films were made in the open air. Although an independent town with some 33,000 inhabitants, Beverly Hills is completely surrounded by the metropolitan area of the city of Los Angeles, and has grown so close to it that the tourist will scarcely get the feeling that he is in a different borough. Situated about 12mi/19km west of Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills was first laid out in 1906 by a land speculator from Beverly Farms in Massachusetts (hence its name) in accordance with a plan whereby the streets would run at a 45ø angle north from Wilshire Boulevard. However, the town developed only slowly, even after the Beverly Hills Hotel was built in 1912, and the census of 1920 showed the population to number only 674 It was due entirely to the growing film industry that more and more film people settled in the wide tree-lined streets, and found it even more pleasing to possess plots of land in the hills at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains, where they built large villas. Pickfair (1143 Summit Drive), the house built by the husband and wife actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and where the actress lived in complete seclusion until her death in 1980, was from 1920 until 1935, when they separated, the social focal point of the film colony.
Bunker Hill
Farmers MarketBunker Hill, not far from the present Civic Center, was where the well-to-do Angelenos lived in their Victorian houses at the turn of the century. In 1901 an open cable-railway, modeled on that in San Francisco, was constructed to make it easier for the residents to climb the eastern part of its hill, and which during the brief period of its existence earned the name "Angel's Flight" (now the name of a restaurant in the Hyatt Regency Hotel). In the fifties and sixties all the Victorian houses were demolished. Today Bunker Hill is a highly developed area with high rises and mix of office buildings, apartments, and public venues. The origin of the Farmers Market (Hollywood Freeway, Silver Lake exit) goes back to the year 1934 when, at the height of the economic depression, eighteen farmers got together and set up stalls on a piece of open land near Wilshire Boulevard (6333 West 3rd Street, corner of Fairfax Avenue) in order to sell their produce direct to the consumer. This experiment was so successful that Farmers Market kept on expanding. Today, in addition to more than 60 fruit, vegetable and food traders, there are no fewer than 20 restaurants and countless other specialist shops, some first class. Some days up to 40,000 people visit Farmers Market. This park, situated in the eastern part of the Santa Monica Mountains, and covering an area of 4,000 acres/1,620 hectares, is the biggest state park in California. In the park is the Los Angeles Zoo, the Griffith Observatory and a planetarium, a Greek theater with 4,000 seats, a riding center created for the 1984 Olympic Games, golf courses and tennis courts and lots more. Walks lasting several hours or drives into the mountains provide splendid views. The park bears the name of its founder Griffith J. Griffith who donated the greater part of the parkland to the city in 1896.
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)
In the meantime the administrators used a storeroom provided by the city, which was very skillfully converted into a number of galleries by the well-known architect Frank GehryThe Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles was founded in 1979 as "a private museum with a public conscience", but the main building on Bunker Hill, designed by the Japanese Arata Osozaki, which was expected to be opened in time for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984, was in fact not ready for occupation until December 1986. Back To Tourist place in California
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