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Union Bank Square

Architect
Albert C. Martin, Sr.
Year
1965
Style
International Style
City
Los Angeles, CA
Union Bank Square
Photo: Minnaert, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Union Bank Plaza is a 40-story, 515-foot International Style skyscraper at 445 South Figueroa Street, designed collaboratively by Harrison & Abramovitz and A.C. Martin & Associates for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company. Construction began in 1965 and finished in 1968, making it the first skyscraper built in downtown Los Angeles's central business district as part of the Bunker Hill redevelopment project, after a 1957 repeal lifted the city's old 150-foot height limit. It took its name from the Union Bank & Trust Company, which leased fourteen floors for its corporate headquarters.

the building

Eckbo's rooftop plaza. Landscape architect Garrett Eckbo designed the three-acre modernist plaza built atop the building's parking garage, giving the tower a landscaped public space unusual for a 1960s downtown office building.

the style

As a 1965 International Style tower, Union Bank Plaza embodies the glass-and-steel modernist vocabulary that swept into downtown Los Angeles the moment height restrictions lifted, marking the literal start of the city's skyline as a field of skyscrapers rather than a flat basin.

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the architect

Albert C. Martin, Sr. led A.C. Martin & Associates, which designed the building collaboratively with Harrison & Abramovitz; his firm has long been associated with major Los Angeles commissions.

significance

Union Bank Plaza is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (No. 1206, designated February 26, 2020) and was the first skyscraper raised in the modern central business district after the city's 1957 height-limit repeal. Its longtime naming tenant, Union Bank, was folded into the U.S. Bank brand after a December 2022 merger, though U.S. Bank continues to lease space in the tower.

nearby

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