Preservationists Fighting for Century Plaza Hotel

The article is an op-ed by L.A. Conservancy Executive Director Linda Dishman and Actress Diane Keaton:

"Completed in 1966, the Century Plaza Hotel was built as the centerpiece of Century City, a "city within a city" conceived 50 years ago in a progressive approach to urban planning. Century City rose on the former backlot of 20th Century-Fox Studios-at 180 acres, an enormous clean slate for realizing bold new planning principles. In the rapidly expanding metropolis of Los Angeles, by then fully entrenched in the culture of the automobile, these principles included separating cars from pedestrians."

"...a common critique of its preservation is that the hotel is less than 50 years old, the general threshold for buildings to become eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Although Los Angeles has no such threshold for local landmarks, the perception that a historic building must be older than we are still poses a problem for preservation-particularly in a city known for its postwar architecture."

Thanks to James Brasuell