Beauty Controlled

Abstract

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, more than twenty plans were prepared for the Los Angeles Civic Center. With their monumental architectural style, broad boulevards and landscaped public plazas, these proposals draw heavily from planning’s early City Beautiful roots and challenge the idea that Los Angeles had only a “brief infatuation” with the movement. This article considers a number of these proposals, paying particular attention to two schemes that bookend the local movement: the 1907 plan prepared by Charles Mulford Robinson for the Municipal Art Commission and the plan prepared by the Allied Architects Association in the mid-1920s. While neither was implemented in full, the discussions that surrounded their adoption demonstrate a continued local interest in aesthetically oriented planning at a grand scale. A close reading of these plans, and especially the ways in which the authors attempt to communicate their ideas visually provides an opportunity to consider how the profession incorporated competing ideas about art and science, professional expertise, race and real estate, in its attempt to persuade public officials and the public at large to act.