The Transamerica_Pyramid was permitted to be about 400 feet taller than the LA+City+Hall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transamerica_Pyramid#Gallery
The very narrow pyramid in SF is almost twice the height of the tallest pyramid in Egypt. Will LA ever be allowed to have a pyramid tower as tall or taller than the one in SF?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ljqamDgwg
Back in the day, the KEEP L.A. SHORT crowd really wanted to make sure that no building in SoCal was as tall as the tallest Egyptian_pyramid. Thus, the Giza_pyramid_complex was taller than anything in LA until the late 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza "Initially standing at 146.6 meters (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the world's tallest human-made structure for more than 3,800 years."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Hall#History "It has 32 floors and, at 454 feet (138 m) high..." https://calisphere.org/item/cf1903e53170db536690f3f8690925a0 Just a little pyramid on top of a building that is shorter than the tallest pyramid in Egypt.
.jpg/960px-Los_Angeles_City_Hall_(from_the_West).jpg)
.tif/lossy-page1-800px-Pyramids_from_afar_(2).tif.jpg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/vintage-photos-los-angeles-1940s-1960s
Of course LA would eventually allow some buildings to be twice as tall as the tallest Egyptian pyramid.
https://www.commercialcafe.com/blog/evolution-downtown-la-visual-timeline/
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?cityID=26&status=15
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=LA+City+Hall
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Transamerica+Pyramid+in+SF
https://vancouversun.com/news/quadreal-sells-the-post-heritage-building-vancouver This stump building+complex doesn't even have 26 floors. It's not much taller than this 22 story stump in LA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_National_Plaza This was the first office complex to rise over 50 floors in LA.
https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=2301 52 stories opened in 1972.
https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/city-national-tower/1395
LA and then Calgary were able to have a double tower complex of over 50 floors, but Vancouver just has a double stump thats not even 25 floors.
https://www.brookfieldproperties.com/en/our-properties/bankers-hall-west-175 47 stories
https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=6993 1989
https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=7073 2000
52 floors in total.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bankers_Hall_Towers_%281%29_%288068206826%29.jpg
https://abc7.com/post/la-city-hall-crash-car-slams-steps/17933164/
Sometimes a person just might be having a bad day, but other times a person might want to take over a building.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-city-hall-crash
If its determined after due process, that this person had malicious intent, they will be facing sever punishment.
L.A. City Hall evacuated after vehicle crashes near steps; driver in custody after standoff https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-10-03/vehicle-crashes-into-steps-of-l-a-city-hall-prompting-closure-of-surrounding-streets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 Two decades before Ray_Bradbury would start writing what would eventually lead to his F 451 novel, LA was sort of close to imposing a 451 foot height limit. However, the LA City Hall would end up being slightly taller than 451 feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Hall "Dedication ceremonies were held on April 26, 1928. It has 32 floors and, at 454 feet (138 m) high..."
"A City Council ordinance passed in 1905 did not permit any new construction to be taller than 13 stories or 150 ft (46 m) in order to keep the city's architecture harmonious. City Hall's 454 ft (138 m) height was deemed exempt as a public building and assured that no building would surpass one third its height for over three decades until the ordinance was repealed by voter referendum in 1957." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Hall#History
https://laist.com/news/entertainment/city-hall-tall 454' not 451 feet, but close nonetheless. LA didn't have to wait until 1953, because it was pondering a 450'-455 foot height restriction in the mid to late 1920s. Of course NYC and Chicago already had tall buildings in the 1920s, so perhaps LA wanted to symbolize an F-U to them by keeping buildings under 500 feet until the mid to late 1960s.
"The writing and theme within Fahrenheit 451 was explored by Bradbury in some of his previous short stories. Between 1947 and 1948, Bradbury wrote "Bright Phoenix", a short story about a librarian who confronts a "Chief Censor", who burns books. An encounter Bradbury had in 1949 with the police inspired him to write the short story "The Pedestrian" in 1951. In "The Pedestrian", a man going for a nighttime walk in his neighborhood is harassed and detained by the police. In the society of "The Pedestrian", citizens are expected to watch television as a leisurely activity, a detail that would be included in Fahrenheit 451. Elements of both "Bright Phoenix" and "The Pedestrian" would be combined into The Fireman, a novella published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1951. Bradbury was urged by Stanley Kauffmann, an editor at Ballantine Books, to make The Fireman into a full novel. Bradbury finished the manuscript for Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and the novel was published later that year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Writing_and_development
F 451 was published in 1953, on 10-19.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13079982-fahrenheit-451
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Historical_and_biographical_context
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/summary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Writing_and_development
Did Metropolis_(1927_film) help to restrict the height of tall buildings in LA for several decades?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)#Influences
Whether the LA City Hall is 454', 453' or 452 feet, it's not exactly 451 feet, but still close enough.
https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-fw-archives-20190403-htmlstory.html "The 32-story, 454-foot-tall Los Angeles City Hall opened with a three-day public celebration April 26-28, 1928. Construction started in 1926."
https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/city-hall/4376 138.4 m / 454 ft
https://buildingsdb.com/CA/los-angeles/los-angeles-city-hall "The Los Angeles City Hall reaches an architectural height of 453ft (138m). It has a total of 32 floors, 28 above ground and 4 basements..."
https://www.travelinusa.us/visit-los-angeles-city-hall "At the time of construction, a regulation was in effect in the city that prohibited buildings taller than 150 feet. Los Angeles City Hall was therefore an exception and, at an impressive 32 stories and a height of 452 feet, it remained the tallest building in Los Angeles until 1964 when Union Bank Plaza opened."
https://waterandpower.org/Museum2/Los_Angeles_City_Hall_1928.html
https://www.c40.org/cities/los-angeles
By the 1970s, LA, SF, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, Toronto, Montreal and Paris, all had some buildings over 600 feet or even over 200 m.
https://www.c40.org/cities/vancouver
Unfortunately by the 1970s, stubborn and backwards Vancouver wanted to go in the opposite direction of most cities. Thus, a kind of censoring agenda was implemented. SF and Sydney and even Seattle, proved that a scenic city by the water can have taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains than what little Vancouver would allow.
While there isn't any direct correlation with the F 451 story and Vancouver, BC imposing a height limit, there is something peculiar. Some people might consider that if a building is around 500 feet in height, or at least 150 m, that's in the category of starting to be a tall building.
Well, Vancouver, always looking for ways to symbolically project a watered down or scaled back city, height restrictions were at the top of the list.
Somewhere in-between the 1950s & 60s, Vancouver started to refine its height restriction mandate. Thus, as several cities in the 1970s started to allow for taller buildings, Vancouver has never allowed any office tower to have 40 floors. Perhaps an imposed 451 foot height limit would have been too obvious, so Vancouver generally had an imposed height restriction of 450 feet, with some occasional variations.
Right through the 1960s only one building in Vancouver, or anywhere in BC had a 30th floor.
The first residential building to have at least 40 floors. https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=921 1973 https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=3
The first residential building to have more than 45 floors. https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=3 2001 https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=6
It wouldn't be until the early 21st century before Vancouver would permit 2 buildings to rise above 600 feet. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=8 , https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=9
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?countryID=1 Vancouver has no building that makes it onto the first page. Burnaby just barely makes it.
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=110144876&page=10 However, Vancouver has another chance to actually have some taller buildings. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?countryID=1&status=15 Over the decades, various plans have been stopped, due to all the red tape B$ and extreme restrictions.
Vancouver has had quite a history of limiting, restricting, thwarting & censoring proper big city stuff.
The Old_City_Hall opened in 1899 at a height of 103.64 m (340.0 ft). Even in the 21st century, many parts of Downtown Vancouver aren't allowed to have buildings taller than Toronto's Old City Hall.
The Post is a stumpy building complex in Vancouver. Despite the high land costs, strict Vancouver wouldn't permit it to be taller than Toronto's Old City Hall. The Stump, rather The Post, should have been taller than the LA City Hall, the Philadelphia_City_Hall and the Manhattan_Municipal_Building. It should have really been closer in size to that of the Seattle_Municipal_Tower or even the Tokyo_Metropolitan_Government_Building.
Library Square in Vancouver just like The Post, wasn't allowed to have 25 floors, when they both should have been well over 50 stories.
https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/library-square/25126 84.1 m / 276 ft
https://www.da-architects.ca/projects/library-square Strict Vancouver just doesnt allow buildings in that part of the downtown to be taller than The Old City Hall in Toronto.
https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2018/10/05/library-square-best-new-public-space-in-vancouver
Unfortunatly, Library Square and The Post are so scaled back or watered down, they would hardly be impressive in most proper big cities around the world. Library Square and The Post should have both been in the 50-60 story range, but don't even have a 25th floor. This was a lost opportunity for Downtown Vancouver to have a proper size big city and government complex.
The Simpson_Tower opened in 1968. It has 33 floors and is 144 m (472 ft) high. It would be equivalent to being the tallest building in BC until 1973. Even in 2025, most office towers in Vancouver aren't allowed to be taller than this 1968 Toronto stump.
It's really astounding that not only did The+Post+in+Vancouver have to be shorter than the Toronto Simpson Tower and the LA+City+Hall, it had to be shorter than the Old City Hall in Toronto. Now that's very small, but it fits in with the small-minded Vancouver mentality. Indeed, Vancouverization is about a backward, rainy city that has a multigenerational restrictive agenda to water everything down. Even the mountains north of Vancouver are shorter than the mountains north of L.A. WTH?
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Post+building+complex
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/sony-pictures-imageworks-global-headquarters-vancouver-the-post
https://storeys.com/quadreal-graeme-scott-the-post-vancouver-heritage-revitalization-amazon/
What could have been a nice, impressive double 55 story office complex is just another Vancouver stumpy building+complex. In that part of the very restrictive city, the building complex wasn't even allowed to have a 25th floor.
It's all part of the Vancouver stump agenda.
Had Bankers_Hall 1 & 2 in Calgary only been 26 stories, they would just be another stump complex. However, at 52 stories, they remain impressive.
https://thelocationportal.com/city-national-plaza/
https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/city-national-tower/1395
https://buildingsdb.com/CA/los-angeles/city-national-plaza/
The stump mentality was firmly in place for LA until the late 1960s, when a building was finally allowed to be taller than the 454' LA+City+Hall.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Post+in+Vancouver
The LA_City_Hall should have been at least 500' tall, but it's only 454'. That still makes the Los_Angeles_City_Hall one of the taller ones around the planet, but it's become a stump of a building in downtown L.A.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_City_Hall#History "...was completed in 1928. Dedication ceremonies were held on April 26, 1928. It has 32 floors and, at 454 feet (138 m) high."
"A City Council ordinance passed in 1905 did not permit any new construction to be taller than 13 stories or 150 ft (46 m) in order to keep the city's architecture harmonious. City Hall's 454 ft (138 m) height was deemed exempt as a public building and assured that no building would surpass one third its height for over three decades until the ordinance was repealed by voter referendum in 1957.[9] Therefore, from its completion in 1928 until finally surpassed by the topping off of Union Bank Plaza in 1966, City Hall was the tallest building in Los Angeles..."
https://laist.com/news/entertainment/city-hall-tall Not 451 feet, but 454 feet, because there was no F 451 novel yet. The 454' LA City Hall was like an unofficial F-you to the taller buildings in NYC and Chicago. Perhaps even Metropolis_(1927_film). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)#Influences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick PKD was born in 1928, the same year that the LA City Hall opened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 "The writing and theme within Fahrenheit 451 was explored by Bradbury in some of his previous short stories. Between 1947 and 1948, Bradbury wrote "Bright Phoenix", a short story about a librarian who confronts a "Chief Censor", who burns books. An encounter Bradbury had in 1949 with the police inspired him to write the short story "The Pedestrian" in 1951. In "The Pedestrian", a man going for a nighttime walk in his neighborhood is harassed and detained by the police. In the society of "The Pedestrian", citizens are expected to watch television as a leisurely activity, a detail that would be included in Fahrenheit 451. Elements of both "Bright Phoenix" and "The Pedestrian" would be combined into The Fireman, a novella published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1951. Bradbury was urged by Stanley Kauffmann, an editor at Ballantine Books, to make The Fireman into a full novel. Bradbury finished the manuscript for Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and the novel was published later that year." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Title
https://laist.com/news/entertainment/city-hall-tall From 2016.
The agenda to not permit any building in LA to be taller than City Hall was the case for several decades. Even Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane & Perth weren't allowed to have buildings taller than the LA_City_Hall for a long time. Of course it took until the early 1970s for Vancouver to allow a building to be a little taller than the LA_City_Hall.
City Hall is really like a stump on the modern LA skyline. It can easily be obscured by the taller towers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Los_Angeles#Tallest_buildings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Bank_Plaza Completed in 1968.
| Roof | 157.28 m (516.0 ft) |
|---|---|
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 40 |
| Floor area | 68,525 m2 (737,600 sq ft) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Bank_Plaza#History Not only the first building permitted in LA to be over 500 feet, but having at least a 40th floor.
Just as LA got its first 40 story building in 1968, PKD had a book out in the same year. Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep?#Plot
https://medium.com/@ejasp2/metropolis-v-s-blade-runner-1982-871baea0eea0
https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Comparison-between-Metropolis-and-Blade-Runner-P3JDKCLEC8BRS#
While Philip_K._Dick set E. Sheep in SF, Blade_Runner was set in LA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Production
There are even bigger plans for CC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Court_North It took several decades until Vancouver would allow some buildings to be taller than CCN.
https://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/05/16-giant-heads-touring-historic-commerce-court-north.26843
https://tayloronhistory.com/2013/02/18/torontos-architectural-gemsthe-bank-of-commerce-cibc-on-king-street Of course CCN has become like a stump in Toronto, but in Vancouver, it would still be a prominent building.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/toronto-feature-canadian-imperial-bank-of-commerce
https://www.torontojourney416.com/canadian-bank-of-commerce-building
https://torontopics.me/2016/05/29/commerce-court-north Like the LA City Hall, CCN would be the equivalent of the tallest buildings in Vancouver for several decades. Yet, for the past few decades, the LA+City+Hall & CCN have become stumps in their cities.
