The Hidden History of 10 Iconic LA Landmarks

It was a billboard. Erected in 1923 to advertise the "Hollywoodland" subdivision, it cost about $21,000, roughly $400,000 today, and was meant to last eighteen months. The "LAND" came off in 1949. When it fell into disrepair, a 1978 rebuild cost $250,000, funded by nine donors who each sponsored a letter for $27,778: Alice Cooper took an "O" in memory of Groucho Marx, Hugh Hefner hosted the gala, and Gene Autry and Andy Williams pitched in too.

Griffith J. Griffith donated the 3,000-plus acres as a Christmas gift in 1896, but the donor was no saint. In 1903 he shot his wife Christina in the eye at a Santa Monica hotel; she survived by leaping from a window, and he served two years at San Quentin for it. The city was so reluctant to take his tainted money that the Observatory (1935) and the Greek Theatre (1929) were only built after his death, paid for by his trust.

Ask who got the first star and you've walked into a trick question. Joanne Woodward's is often called the first, but hers was one of eight demonstration stars unveiled in 1958 as a prototype. The first star of the actual Walk belongs to director Stanley Kramer, laid on March 28, 1960. And a star isn't a prize you win, a sponsor pays a fee, now $85,000, that covers creation, installation, the ceremony, and lifetime upkeep.

The largest ballpark in Major League Baseball by capacity sits on the razed remains of three Mexican-American neighborhoods. Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop. Families were pushed out in the 1950s by eminent domain for public housing that was never built; the land went to the Dodgers instead. On "Black Friday," May 9, 1959, deputies carried Aurora Vargas from her home as bulldozers moved in, the Battle of Chavez Ravine.

What looks like one pier is really two fused together. The narrow Municipal Pier opened in 1909, and it was built partly to carry the city's sewer outfall pipe out past the surf. The wide Pleasure Pier next door, with its 1916 Looff Hippodrome and carousel, brought the amusements. So the pier everyone photographs began, unglamorously, as infrastructure for sewage.

This twelve-acre civic park, opened in phases from 2012, stitches downtown together from City Hall to the Music Center around the restored 1960s Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain. In 2023 it was renamed Gloria Molina Grand Park to honor the late LA County Supervisor, a trailblazer for the region, who championed its creation. (You'll still see people call it plain "Grand Park.")

Tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney opened "Venice of America" on July 4, 1905, complete with about sixteen miles of real canals and imported gondoliers. Most of the canals were paved over in 1929 for cars; only a fraction survive today. The bodybuilding scene that made the boardwalk famous came later. The original Muscle Beach was actually up the sand in Santa Monica, with "Muscle Beach Venice" arriving in 1951.

The $1.3-billion hilltop museum was engineered to survive wildfire, and it proved it in January 2025, when the Palisades Fire reached its doorstep and the collection was never in danger. Cleared brush, on-site water tanks, crushed-stone roofs, double-walled galleries, and a sealing air-handling system that keeps smoke out did the work. Its 16,000 tons of travertine were quarried near Tivoli, Italy, the same beds that built ancient Rome, and the blocks are studded with real fossils.

The red beacon atop the tower has blinked "Hollywood" in Morse code since 1956, an idea from Capitol president Alan Livingston, switched on at the dedication by Samuel Morse's own granddaughter, Leila Morse. Below it, Les Paul-designed underground echo chambers gave records by Sinatra and Nat King Cole their signature sound. And the round shape? Coincidence. The architect's team says it was practical, not a tribute to a stack of vinyl.

The forecourt handprint tradition began in 1927, but the romantic tale of Norma Talmadge "accidentally" stepping in wet cement is the theatre's own legend. The first prints actually belong to Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and founder Sid Grauman separately claimed he stepped in it first, staging the whole ritual as showmanship. The unusual impressions are real, though: Whoopi Goldberg's dreadlock, John Wayne's fist, Harold Lloyd's glasses, Betty Grable's leg.