Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Stand on the plaza for a moment and feel the stone under your feet. It is smooth and pale, and it holds the warmth of the Los Angeles sun long after noon. Above you rise tall, tapering columns, and behind them a wall of glass. On a quiet afternoon you can hear traffic on Grand Avenue, fountains on the plaza, and the soft echo of footsteps in the open air.

This is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the largest hall of the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles. It opened in 1964. For a city often described as all freeways and sprawl, it was a statement. Los Angeles was saying that it wanted a cultural heart, and that it wanted that heart on a hilltop, dressed in marble and light.

The hilltop matters. You are standing on Bunker Hill. In the late nineteenth century this was a neighbourhood of grand Victorian houses. By the middle of the twentieth century, many of those houses had aged into boarding rooms. City redevelopment then cleared much of the old hill. Office towers, plazas and cultural buildings replaced it. The pavilion belongs to that new Bunker Hill, a deliberate attempt to rebuild downtown around culture and civic pride.

Now to the name. Dorothy Buffum Chandler was the wife of Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. She was the driving force behind this building. She campaigned for years, gathered donors, and organised fundraising events across the city. Her efforts brought together old money and new Hollywood money, which rarely shared a room at the time. The hall carries her name because without her campaign, it would very likely never have been built.

The architects were Welton Becket and Associates, a Los Angeles firm. Becket's office also designed the round Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood. Look at the pavilion's outline. It is a simple box wrapped in a colonnade of slim, fluted columns. These columns widen slightly as they rise. The style is often called classical modernism, a modern building that borrows the calm order of a Greek temple. Some people see a West Coast answer to New York's Lincoln Center, which was rising at the same time.

Walk closer to the glass and look inside. The lobby, called the Grand Hall, is famous for its crystal chandeliers. They hang in long, glittering rows, and in the evening they turn the whole facade into a lantern. From the plaza after dark, you can watch people in evening clothes move up the staircases. The building was designed to be seen into, so the audience itself becomes part of the show.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. For decades, this was the home of the Academy Awards. Between 1969 and 1999, the Oscars returned here again and again. The red carpet stretched across this plaza. Film stars climbed these steps, and photographers crowded the edges. Many of the most replayed moments in Oscar history happened on the stage inside. If you have watched old ceremony clips, you have probably seen this lobby without knowing its name.

The Oscars eventually left, and a new purpose-built theatre opened in Hollywood in the early 2000s. But the pavilion's link to the film world never fully disappeared. Hollywood money helped build the Music Center in the first place. Studio leaders sat on its boards. In a sense, the building has always been a meeting point between the city's two great industries, entertainment and civic ambition.

Music, of course, is the core of the story. For almost four decades, this hall was the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Generations of Angelenos heard their first symphony concert here. Then, in 2003, the orchestra moved across the street to Walt Disney Concert Hall. Turn and look for it. Its curving steel sails, designed by Frank Gehry, catch the light in a completely different way. The two buildings face each other like two different centuries in conversation.

The second surprise is what happened next. Rather than going quiet, the pavilion became the home of LA Opera. The company was founded in the 1980s and grew quickly. Today it stages full productions here, with large sets, chorus and orchestra. The hall also presents major dance companies on tour. With around three thousand seats, it remains one of the largest performance spaces in the city, and that scale suits grand opera and ballet very well.

Take a look around the rest of the Music Center. The pavilion shares this raised plaza with two smaller theatres, the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre. Together they form one campus, planned as a single cultural complex. The plaza between them was renovated in recent years. It now hosts free public events, dance nights and outdoor gatherings. On some evenings, you will find people learning steps together under the open sky.

The neighbourhood around you has changed a lot since 1964. Grand Avenue now holds museums, apartment towers and restaurants. The Broad museum sits a short walk to the south, and Grand Park slopes down toward City Hall. When the pavilion opened, downtown often emptied after office hours. Today the area stays busier into the evening, and this hall was one of the first anchors of that revival.

So pause here once more before you leave. Look up at the columns and follow them to the edge of the roof. Notice how the chandeliers glow behind the glass, even in daylight. Listen for the fountain and the passing cars. This building was one woman's long campaign, a home for orchestras and film stars, and now a stage for opera and dance. As you walk away along Grand Avenue, glance back once... the pavilion still looks like it is waiting for the curtain to rise.