James Oviatt Building vs Los Angeles City Hall

Comparing the James Oviatt Building and the Los Angeles City Hall is interesting because they both stand in Los Angeles, CA, and were completed in the same year, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The Los Angeles City Hall is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 453ft (138m) with 28 floors above ground, while the James Oviatt Building reaches 161ft (49m) with 13 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the James Oviatt Building and the Los Angeles City Hall were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Art Deco style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Walker & Eisen and Parkinson & Parkinson followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

The James Oviatt Building is primarily commercial, while the Los Angeles City Hall is primarily governmental.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.