As a toddler, I’d usually go to the Griffith Observatory, the place my dad and mom took me and my sisters to marvel on the views of town and see the celebs at night time by way of the well-known public telescopes. However what I’ll always remember is what greeted me indoors, simply by way of the primary entrance, after I seemed up.
Within the central rotunda, a colourful ceiling mural made my jaw drop: There have been frolicking animals, joyful youngsters and wondrous figures (some winged, some nude) having a celebration within the sky with the moon — and I wished to hitch them.
The expertise of seeing that 1934 mural — by artist and filmmaker Hugo Ballin, whose work may also be present in Metropolis Corridor, the Southern California Edison constructing, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple and the previous Los Angeles Occasions constructing downtown — has stayed with me. All through my life, it’s served as a reminder to gaze upward — or miss the numerous visible feasts that exist straight overhead.
During the last a number of months, I’ve visited and revisited L.A. locations with breathtaking ceilings, now with my very own younger daughter by my facet. I’ve realized about their historical past and structure and the huge efforts taken to protect them. (Though many of those ceilings are actually protected by native and nationwide decree, speedy growth, pure disasters and our personal vices — a long time of cigar and cigarette smoke, as an illustration — have taken a toll. If not for the passionate work of artisans, engineers, architects, preservationists and funders, many of those ceilings wouldn’t exist right now.) Right here, I share the 32 most spectacular ceilings I’ve discovered, although the picks might simply triple in quantity.
Let this information be a place to begin to your adventures in wanting up. The listing, introduced in chronological order by every vacation spot’s completion date (the oldest was unveiled in 1911), predictably contains historic film palaces, performing arts venues and locations of worship — areas meant to move us out of our on a regular basis lives. However different locations could shock you: a tiny ingesting gap, a neighborhood library or workplace buildings in the midst of downtown L.A.
There are masterpieces in each nook of town price getting a neck ache over.
Right here’s to the previous ceilings and to Angelenos who proceed to push inventive boundaries with all that’s means above our heads.
