Century City, Los Angeles, CA
Century City is a 176-acre (71.2 ha) neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles, California. Located on the Westside to the south of Santa Monica Boulevard around 10 miles (16 km) west of Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one of the most prominent employment centers in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and its skyscrapers form a distinctive skyline on the Westside.
The district was developed on the former backlot of film studio 20th Century Studios, and its first building was opened in 1963. There are two private schools, but no public schools in the neighborhood. Important to the economy are the Westfield Century City shopping center, business towers, and Fox Studios
The land of Century City belonged to cowboy actor Tom Mix (1880-1940), who used it as a ranch.[3] It later became a backlot of 20th Century Fox, which still has its headquarters just to the southwest.[3] The area is named for the 20th Century Fox's Century Property.
In 1956, Spyros Skouras (1893-1971), who served as the President of 20th Century Fox from 1942 until 1962, and his nephew-in-law Edmond Herrscher (died 1983), an attorney sometimes known as "the father of Century City", decided to repurpose the land for real estate development.[3][4] The following year, in 1957, they commissioned a master-plan development from Welton Becket Associates, which was unveiled at a major press event on the "western" backlot later that year.[3]
In 1961, after Fox suffered a string of expensive flops, culminating with the financial strain put on the studio by the very expensive production of Cleopatra, the film studio sold about 180 acres (0.73 km2) to developer William Zeckendorf and Aluminum Co. of America, also known as Alcoa, for US$300 million (US$2.4 billion in 2014's money).[3] Herrscher had encouraged his uncle-in-law to borrow money instead, but once Skouras refused, he was out of the picture.[3]
The new owners conceived Century City as "a city within a city".[5] In 1963, the first building, Gateway West Building, was completed.[3] The next year, in 1964, Minoru Yamasaki designed the Century Plaza Hotel.[3] Five years later, in 1969, architects Anthony J. Lumsden and CĂ©sar Pelli designed the Century City Medical Plaza.