Click on any picture to see a larger version.

Los Angeles has a reputation as a place where everyone is eager to discard the past in favor of something new and glitzy. And where history matters only when real estate developers need romantic-sounding or cryptically distinctive names for strip malls and housing tracts. As with many snarky stereotypes, that reputation is at least somewhat deserved, particularly in the sprawling suburbs. But in Downtown Los Angeles, many historic landmarks can still be found nestled underneath the skyline of glass and steel skyscrapers.

Here are three landmarks from the 1920s and 1930s: the Biltmore Hotel (1923), City Hall (1928), and Union Station (1939). (Two more Victorian-era landmarks are here.)

The Millennium Biltmore Hotel on Pershing Square is imposing outside, though impressive mainly to fans of Beaux-Arts architecture. But venture inside and you’ll see what was considered the height of Jazz Age elegance.

When it opened in 1923, the Los Angeles Biltmore was the largest hotel west of Chicago. Designed by New York architects Leonard Schultze and S. Fullerton Weaver, it combines several opulent architectural styles to rival New York’s renowned Waldorf-Astoria, which then set the standard for American luxury hotels— and which Schultze and Weaver also designed.

The entrance on Olive Street is the Rendezvous Court, originally the hotel’s lobby. The arches, vaulted ceiling, and elaborately decorated walls invoke a Spanish Renaissance palace, or perhaps a redecorated Moorish castle.

The ornate staircase in the Rendezvous Court leads to the Galeria (also accessible through an entrance on Fifth Street). Inspired by the luxuriant decoration of aristocratic Italian palazzi, it has an elaborate inlaid ceiling designed by Italian-born muralist Giovanni Smeraldi. Smeraldi painted his distinctive “Italian Renaissance Revival” decorations and murals on buildings all over the United States, including the White House, Grand Central Station in New York, and the Santa Barbara County Courthouse. He reportedly considered the Biltmore his finest work.

Along the Galeria are the hotel’s meeting and conference rooms. The Crystal Ballroom is the largest and fanciest of them. It’s best known as the site of a 1927 luncheon, where members of the brand-new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences planned a ceremony to present achievement awards for their peers in the Academy’s five branches. There, on a Biltmore napkin, MGM’s art director reputedly drew the first design for a world-famous gold statuette. On the Galeria wall is a mural-sized enlargement of a photograph taken at the banquet, labeled with the names of every participant who could be identified.

Los Angeles City Hall might be proof that Los Angeles officialdom can take history (as well as themselves) very seriously when they want to. The distinctive top of the tower, with its colonnade and pyramid, was supposedly inspired by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the grandiose fourth century BCE tomb of the Persian governor Mausolus that was one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World. The overall design also seems to echo the Los Angeles Central Library, which had recently opened when architects John Parkinson, John Austin, and Albert Martin began designing City Hall.

To further burnish its historical credentials, the concrete from which the building was constructed contains water from all 21 of California’s Spanish-era missions and sand from each of the state’s 58 counties. The dedication ceremony on 26 April 1928 had all the appropriate pomp.

138 meters high with 32 floors, City Hall was the tallest building in Los Angeles until 1964. For over three decades, planning officials resolutely refused to approve any building taller than 46 meters. Seismic safety was the official reason. (City Hall was specifically designed to withstand earthquakes, with base isolation and special compressible units on each floor.) But there also may have been an unofficial desire of politicians and bureaucrats to prevent anyone from eclipsing the grandeur of their palace.

Los Angeles City Hall should be familiar to older television viewers. It was Dragnet’s police headquarters and the offices of Clark Kent/Superman’s Daily Planet. It’s also embossed on Officer Reed and Malloy’s badges in Adam-12, just as it appears on the badges of actual Los Angeles police officers.

In the 1920s, the three railroad companies that carried passengers to and from Los Angeles decided to consolidate their operations in a large new station. They originally planned to build it on the site of El Pueblo de Los Angeles, where Los Angeles was founded as a Spanish pueblo (town) in the 18th century. The historic district had been neglected for years, and its run-down buildings were deemed overdue for demolition.

Fortunately for the many visitors to Olvera Street in the restored El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park across from the station, the railroads determined that demolishing the adjacent Chinatown would be cheaper. It was also politically easier. Chinatown was an even more decrepit slum that many local residents and officials were eager to be rid of. And opposition to the destruction of El Pueblo was gaining momentum as planning for the station began.

The Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal opened in 1939. It turned out to be America’s last major passenger railroad station. (The word union, found in the names of several large American railroad stations, has nothing to do with labor or collective bargaining. In the days when passenger rail was a thriving business with multiple railroad companies, it meant a station in a major city shared by two or more of those railroads. The Union Pacific, Santa Fe, and Southern Pacific railroads shared— and paid for— the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal.)

The building’s exterior has the gleaming white stucco of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, surrounded with palm trees to enhance the Southern California ambiance. Inspired by the Franciscan missions of 18th century California, this style originated with the 1915 Panama-California International Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park. By the 1930s it had become ubiquitous throughout Southern California, and was practically obligatory for any major public building.

Architects John and Donald Parkinson (who also designed City Hall) had more latitude in designing the station’s interior. They employed the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles that travelers in 1939 would have regarded as both elegant and ultra-modern.

Today’s passengers still wait for their trains in the restored upholstered seats of the station’s spacious main waiting hall— quite different from the holding pens at today’s airport gates. It has elaborately inlaid floors and brass Art Deco chandeliers. The walls are made of alabaster and a corkboard material that was an early kind of acoustical tile. The Ticketing Concourse at the station’s entrance is similarly opulent. It’s now a venue for advertising and movie shoots, weddings, and other private functions. It’s closed to the public, but you can often peer into it as you enter the station.

Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal was the city’s dominant transportation hub through the 1950s, when first the automobile and then the airplane made the long-distance passenger train obsolete. Despite the usual pressures to replace it with something newer and better, the station remained intact (and on the National Register of Historic Places) to await a resurgence. That resurgence began when Catellus Development Corporation— originally the real estate holding company for the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads after they merged— bought the station in 1990. After refurbishment and renaming as “Los Angeles Union Station,” it has once again become a major transit hub. It served over a million and a half passengers in 2011.

Although Amtrak still operates a few long-distance routes, the majority of the trains at Union Station carry commuters and other passengers to places within Southern California. There are also three Metro Rail light rail lines operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (“Metro”), which bought Union Station in 2011. The Red and Purple Lines have an underground facility at the east end of the station, but the above-ground Gold Line uses a regular train platform. A short ride on the Gold Line to Chinatown, Little Tokyo, or Pasadena might be the cheapest way to get a small taste of what Union Station must have been like in the heyday of passenger rail.

Also at the east end of the station is Patsaouras Transit Plaza, the fancy name of a bus station for Metro and various other municipal transit agencies that serve Downtown. It’s named for Nick Patsaouras, an advocate of bus transit and long-time member of Metro’s advisory board. The plaza’s indoor lobby has a large semicircular skylight, an information booth, and escalators leading to the Metro Rail Red and Purple Lines.

The fine print: Pictures and text are copyright © 2010, 2011, and 2012 by Ted R. Marcus and may not be reproduced without permission. For information about licensing any of these images for Web, print, stock, or other uses, contact me.