City preview · Greater Los Angeles
An 1893 office building has played the future, while asphalt bubbles under a city lawn with no special effects. Above it all, an observatory frames stars and basin together, and one man spent more than thirty years raising towers in his backyard.
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01 · Griffith Observatory
The observatory looks toward the stars and back across the entire Los Angeles Basin.
Griffith Observatory opened in 1935 as a public astronomy institution and quickly became one of the city’s best places to look back at itself. White domes face the sky; terraces face the basin.
Source: Wikipedia
02 · La Brea Tar Pits and Museum
Beneath this lawn, natural asphalt is still bubbling toward the surface.
La Brea Tar Pits is Los Angeles’s most direct underground time machine. Natural asphalt seeped upward and trapped mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and other Ice Age animals over tens of thousands of years.
Source: Wikipedia
03 · Watts Towers Arts Center
One person spent more than 30 years lifting a backyard into the sky without plans or sponsors.
Simon Rodia began Watts Towers around 1921, building steel, mortar, tile, shells, and broken glass into high spires.
Source: Wikipedia
04 · Bradbury Building
The future in Blade Runner is an 1893 office building.
The Bradbury Building was completed in 1893. Its exterior is quiet; the event is inside, where a five-story court, iron stairs, open cage elevators, and a skylight pull daylight all the way to the floor.
Source: WikipediaAll images on this page are City Whisper editorial illustrations, not historical photographs, news photographs, or evidence.
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