Added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 17, 2020

The Federal Building is hemmed in by the 405 freeway, Wilshire Boulevard and a parking lot large enough to fit more than 1400 vehicles. It actually fits right in, its hulking 17-story mass rising like a concrete island out of an asphalt ocean, surrounded by concrete rivers.

If that description suggests some corporate-industrial Mount Doom, it’s unintentional. Far from being the faceless government building that its name would suggest, the Federal Building at 11000 Wilshire offers a lot to look at. All those rigid white vertical fins shooting 275 feet up, criss-crossing with horizontal bands of glass and black spandrels. On the north side, it looks like a giant Fender amp, or maybe one of the more expensive desktop computers from the 1990s. The south side introduces a dramatic central tower, plus a one-story concrete colonnade in the plaza area, extending east and west of the main building. The interplay of all those verticals and horizontals are just astounding, especially as the sun’s going down and the columns cast their shadows in the plaza. Depending on your vantage point, the Federal Building looks like five different buildings. 

The 28-acre site where the Federal Building sits was carved out of a 600-acre plot of land, once occupied by the Sawtelle Veterans Home, established in the 1880s to take care of Civil War vets. In 1930 it became part of the new Veterans Administration, and by the 1960s the West LA Veterans Affairs campus (see visits #34-36) had become the largest VA operation in America. 

In the late ‘50s the VA announced that it would sell off the southeast portion of its sprawling property. That’s when the General Services Administration (GSA) came-a-knockin’. The GSA was formed in 1949 to modernize and maintain federal buildings. A whole lot of new departments of government were introduced during the Great Depression and WWII, and they needed spaces somewhere to do their thing. 

During the Kennedy administration, an Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space set out some basic principles to guide the construction of new federal buildings. At the top of the list was hiring outside firms that represented cutting-edge architectural thought, instead of relying on a central designer employed by the government. They also wanted to avoid an “official style,” and let the currents of architectural trends dictate how government buildings looked, not vice-versa. Last, the Ad Hoc Committee recommended that the building site should allow plenty of space for landscaping. 

You can see how all of these guidelines played out at 11000 Wilshire. The GSA selected Charles Luckman Associates to design it, the same firm that gave us the Forum in Inglewood, the massive Aon Center skyscraper downtown and Madison Square Garden in New York; Earlier in his career, Luckman co-led a team of architects that designed the LAX Theme Building. Luckman himself was a controversial figure, especially in preservation circles (for example, he once advocated for the demolition of the LA Central Library). But his firm’s impact on corporate architecture is undeniable. They knew how to make the monumental look cool, even as they were designing for efficiency and economy. 

The design that Charles Luckman Associates came up with was totally of-the-moment, a late modern style transitioning away from the international style that dominated mid-century corporate architecture. And they took the recommendation for landscaping seriously. Plentiful walkways and benches make the entire thing into a proper campus, not just a big office building. The entire thing is surrounded by grasses, shrubs, trees and flowers. When I visited in February of 2023, flowers on the southern and eastern edges of the Federal Building were blooming in a riot of white, yellow and purple, softening the hard white edges of the building. A sunken garden on the west edge offers a place for respite – I imagine it’s a popular lunch spot.

In designing the new Federal Building we sought to provide the General Services Administration with a highly efficient, totally flexible office tower which compares favorably with quality commercial structures of the same scope…

We achieved equal, uninterrupted floors throughout the building by placing the main lobby area outside the tower on the ground level, and then locating the 10 high-speed elevators on the exterior as a separate element. To achieve even further flexibility, we placed the stairwells and utility spaces in a separate shaft at each end of the tower.

–James M. Luckman, President, Charles Luckman & Associates in the Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1969 

Though the office could comfortably fit around 2000 employees, it was designed to safely house 13,000 in the top floors and basement. This was the Cold War after all, and civil defense was top of mind. The massive, uninterrupted white walls on the east and west sides were also useful for projecting public service messages. At various points, the feds would splash reminders to lock your car, or buy savings bonds, even to use zip codes (they were still fairly new in 1969).

When it first opened, the Federal Building hosted a ton of different agencies representing many of the least sexy elements of our federal bureaucracy: the LA field office of the FBI, the Veterans Administration, the GSA, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Treasury Department, the National Labor Relations Board, the Selective Service and the IRS. Senators George Murphy and Alan Cranston had their offices there, as did Rep. Alphonzo E. Bell Jr. A US Postal Service branch was downstairs in the southwest wing on the plaza level, with a cafe on the southeast. 

As you might imagine with a building so tied into the federal government, housing people that both make and carry out policy, the Federal Building has been the site of many a protest over the years. Disabled veterans occupied Senator Cranston’s office in 1974 to protest the conditions in VA hospitals. In 1982-83, as the effects of the Iranian revolution were unfolding, members of LA’s sizable Iranian expat population protested in support of – and against – the revolutionaries. The grassroots AIDS activist group Act Up staged a memorable “die-in” at the Federal Building in 1989, protesting the government’s policies on AIDS drugs. It continues to be a favorite spot to picket, from immigration rights advocates to anti-war activists, from people protesting the end of Roe vs. Wade to Ukrainian Americans protesting the Russian invasion. The corner of Wilshire and Veteran is an old-fashioned hotbed of activity for the social justice-minded.

Tenants have come and gone since 1969, but the Federal Building still houses a regional benefits office of the VA, the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office and the US State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs among others. Woe to you if you need to make an appointment there, but at least you’ve got something impressive to look at while you’re waiting for your expedited passport, or applying for your VA benefits.  

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ “Community Welcomes New Federal Building” (Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1969 – accessed via ProQuest)

+ Dawsey, Darrell: “80 Arrested as AIDS Protest Is Broken Up” (Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1989)

+ Desser, Lou: “New Federal Building to Be Dedicated” (Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1969 – accessed via ProQuest)

+ “Federal Building” (LAConservancy.org)

+ Groves, Martha: “U.S. to remodel Federal Building” (Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2008)

+ Harboe, T. Gunny, Carmen Pauli & Eileen Magno: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Building’s NRHP nomination form (note: this is a different Federal Building than the one at 11000 Wilshire Boulevard) 

+ Shaw, Deborah: “Community Calendar: Black History Events” (Los Angeles Sentinel, February 28, 2002 – accessed via ProQuest)

+ “The Untold Story of the ZIP Code” (USPS Office of Inspector General, April 1, 2013)

+ Votisek, Christi Chidester: “Meet the New Historic Buildings on the Block” (GSA.gov, May 20, 2021)