Description

Located at 211 W. Temple Street, The Los Angeles County Hall of Justice was built in 1925, designed by the Allied Architects Association, a collective of prominent architects whose other contributions include City Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. The historic fourteen-story building was built in the Beaux Arts and Italian Renaissance style with concrete floor slabs, a steel frame structure, and an exterior of white granite. The Hall of Justice is the oldest surviving government building in the civic center area and was the nation's first consolidated judicial facility housing the Los Angeles County courts, Los Angeles County Coroner, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, the Los Angeles County District Attorney and the Los Angeles County jail, until it was red-tagged and vacated after damage from the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. It was host to many infamous trials including those for Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson and housed such notables as Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin and Robert Mitchum. Autopsies were also performed here including those for Marilyn Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy. After the Northridge earthquake, many attempts had been made to renovate and re-open the Hall of Justice. It is currently undergoing a major $234-million renovation and, once open, will again house offices for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the District Attorney.CORE members sit on the floor in the Hall of Justice rotunda on January 30, 1964, in a sympathy demonstration for a jailed member. Their signs support school education.

Record Contributed By

Los Angeles Public Library

Record Harvested From

California Digital Library