Beverly Hills Walking Tour (Self Guided), Los Angeles

Just as the name suggests, this building houses the city administration, including the office of the Mayor of Beverly Hills and board meetings of the Beverly Hills City Council. Designed in California Churrigueresque style, which is a type of Spanish Revival architecture, this building was created by architects William J. Gage and Harry G. Koerner. The construction lasted from 1931 to 1932. Upon inauguration in 1932, The Los Angeles Times called it the "largest and most expensive City Hall of any municipality its size in the country."

During renovation in 1982, the building was expanded from 49,000 to 67,000 square feet. Another renovation, of the ground-floor reception area in 2008, saw its main entrance moved from North Crescent Drive to North Rexford Drive.

The building appeared in several Hollywood movies, including “In a Lonely Place” (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950) and “Beverly Hills Cop” (dir. Martin Brest, 1984).

In May 2013, the Beverly Hills City Council voted to add it to its list of historical preservations.

As part of the Beverly Hills Centennial Arts of Palm Installation, sculptor Brad Howe designed four sculptures outside the City Hall which, according to The Beverly Hills Courier, is "the largest short-term public art installation ever to be held in Beverly Hills."

Additionally, the building houses the Municipal Gallery, an evolving art space created by interior designer Gere Kavanaugh. Among other artifacts here is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin, called “Torso of a Walking Man”.

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is a community arts center in Beverly Hills, named for philanthropist Wallis Annenberg in recognition for The Annenberg Foundation's major gift to fund the campus. It is colloquially known as The Wallis.

The center was designed by architect Zoltan Pali of SPF:architects. It includes the historic 1933 Beverly Hills post office, the newly built 500-seat Goldsmith Theater, the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, GRoW at The Wallis: A Space for Arts Education, a sculpture garden and a promenade terrace designed by Ron Lutsko. The Goldsmith theater is named after Bram Goldsmith, the Chairman Emeritus of City National Bank. The restored landmark Beverly Hills post office is named for Paula Kent Meehan.

Endowed by heiress and philanthropist Wallis Annenberg (born 1939), who donated US$25 million, The Wallis was under construction for ten years. The total cost of creating it is estimated at $70 million, with an annual operating budget of several million dollars.

The opening on October 17, 2013 was celebrated with a black-tie gala, co-chaired by Wallis Annenberg and Jamie Tisch. Kevin Spacey, John Lithgow and Diane Lane inaugurated the 500-seat Goldsmith Theater by reading letters from Groucho Marx, Tennessee Williams, Peter Tchaikovsky, Will Rogers and others. The evening was followed by a fashion show by Salvatore Ferragamo and performances by the likes of Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo and Paris Opera Ballet members Mathias Heymann and Myriam Ould-Braham.

Beverly Gardens Park is 22 block long and stretches along Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills for 1.9 miles (3.1 km). It was designed by landscape architect Ralph D. Cornell.

The park serves to provide a lengthy green swath between the northern residential area and the commercial sections of the city. It features a two-mile jogging path, many hundred-year-old cypress and ficus trees, gardens, sculpture, and the big, iconic Beverly Hills Sign, a re-creation of the original arching, lighted historic sign, built near the city's center.

A permanent collection of Public Art includes the Electric Fountain at the far west end of the linear park, at the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards. Near Rodeo Drive stands a sculpture of psychedelic tulips by Yayoi Kusama, called Hymn to Life, sculpted and produced in the art department at Ironwood by Mat McKim and Nick Petronzio. Other contemporary public art by sculptors such as Barry Flanagan, Tony Smith and Magdalena Abramovicz are installed on the garden grounds in the vicinity of Beverly Hills City Hall. Historic fountains, arbors, and specialty gardens devoted to roses, cacti, succulents, and palms are also visible to drivers and pedestrians along the north side of Santa Monica Boulevard, from Doheny Drive to Whittier Drive.

The Church of the Good Shepherd on North Bedford drive in Beverly Hills is a truly enchanting small Catholic temple.

Consecrated in 1924, this lovely church, which houses 600 worshippers, is the oldest in Beverly Hills and has been the local Parish church for many Hollywood stars, including Bing Crosby and Rudolph Valentino. It has also held funeral services for people such as Alfred Hitchcock, Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra. On a more joyful note, it has also celebrated the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor to Conrad Hilton and Mark Wahlberg to Rhea Durham, among many others.

The elegant building has a Spanish Colonial Revival facade, with white walls and terracotta roof tiles. It has two graceful spires topped with golden domes and many beautiful stained-glass windows. The three front entrances feature carved wooden doors set in archways, with a short flight of shallow steps leading up to the entrance. The church stands in well-tended gardens, with green lawns, cedar trees and cacti. There is a statue of Jesus Christ holding a lamb in front of the building.

The interior of the church is as lovely as the exterior, but quite simple with its double row of dark wooden pews and two small side chapels. Its many windows give the interior a light, airy atmosphere.

The Spadena House, also known as The Witch's House, is a storybook house in Beverly Hills. It is known for its fanciful, intentionally dilapidated design, and is a landmark included on tours of the area. The first residents of the 3,500 square feet (330 m2) home, the Spadena family, lent the house their name.

The property was designed by Hollywood art director Harry Oliver, who had worked on more than 30 films between 1919 and 1938 as an art director and set decorator, and went on to play a major role in Storybook architecture. The house was originally built in 1921 to serve as the offices and dressing rooms for Irvin Willat's film studio in Culver City, and was moved to its present location in 1926. The converted private home, with its pointy, lopsided roof, tiny windows and stucco with a distressed paint job were then surrounded by an intentionally overgrown English-style garden and a moat-like pond.

Architect Charles Willard Moore once described the building as the "quintessential Hansel and Gretel house." The residence appears in several movies including 1995's “Clueless.”

Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by the Armenian-American art dealer, Larry Gagosian, who developed a reputation for staging museum-quality exhibitions of contemporary art. Born in Los Angeles, Gagosian opened his first galleries on Almont Drive and Robertson Boulevard in the early 1980s. Gagosian Beverly Hills, designed by acclaimed American architect Richard Meier, opened its doors for the first time in 1995 with new sculptures by Frank Stella, and later mounted exhibitions by Edward Ruscha, Nan Goldin, Frank Gehry, Jeff Koons and Richard Prince.

One of the leading contemporary galleries, it has showed modern artists such as Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein and Abstract Expressionism group exhibitions, as well as all the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries including Andy Warhol, Gregory Crewdson, Taryn Simon, Tom Sachs and others.

In 2010, the expansion of the Beverly Hills gallery into the next-door building to create a second light-filled space of equal scale — again designed by Meier — enabled even more ambitious programming, with major exhibitions by Urs Fischer, Andreas Gursky, Jeff Koons, Giuseppe Penone, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, and Taryn Simon, among others.

At Gagosian’s much-anticipated “Oscar shows,” an annual fixture in the Los Angeles cultural calendar, the art, film, and celebrity communities rub shoulders prior to the Academy Awards ceremony.

Operation Hours:
Mon–Sat 10am-6pm

Rodeo Drive is a two-mile-long (3.2 km) street passing through the heart of Beverly Hills. This name is most commonly used metonymically to refer to the three-block stretch north of Wilshire Boulevard and south of Little Santa Monica Boulevard, the so-called Golden Triangle, packed to the brim with 100+ world-renowned luxury boutiques and hotels.

At the base of Rodeo Drive on Wilshire Boulevard sits one of Beverly Hills' oldest and most luxurious hotels, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel. Built in 1928, it is affectionately known as the "Pretty Woman hotel" having provided backdrop to the exterior scenes from the classic movie starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.

Just across the street is Beverly Hills’ own European-style shopping center, Two Rodeo Drive, complete with a cobblestone walkway, street lamps and floral displays. Famous brands like Versace, Jimmy Choo, Lanvin and Tiffany & Co. are found here along with two restaurants: 208 Rodeo Restaurant and Urasawa – one of the most expensive sushi restaurants in the United States.

Similarly to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there's a fashion superstar sidewalk too, called Rodeo Drive Walk of Style®, featuring the likes of Fred Hayman, Tom Ford, Giorgio Armani, Princess Grace of Monaco, Salvatore Ferragamo, Gianni and Donatella Versace and Manolo Blahnik.

Another spot not to be missed is the yellow Rolls-Royce – the custom made Phantom Drophead Coupe belonging to Bijan Pakzad of House of Bijan, which is one of Rodeo Drive's most exclusive men's stores, operating on an appointment-only basis and catering to celebrities, athletes, royalty, dignitaries and even the last four U.S. Presidents. This Rolls-Royce is a permanent fixture along the street, with a matching yellow parking meter and sidewalk plaques featuring House of Bijan’s logos beside its Rodeo Drive parking spot. Hundreds of tourists flock here daily to snap a photo.

Why You Should Visit:
A classic landmark where the wealthy and famous spend their time in L.A.
An iconic place with plenty of shops and cafes.
The super glamorous Rodeo Drive sets a beautiful backdrop for a nice afternoon walk, plus a great place to take some pretty pictures of Beverly Hills.

Tip:
While it’s not a great place for an average person to shop at, people watching is quite fun here. You’re going to see it all, from those not caring at all to those trying way too hard to impress others.

Built in 1952, the Anderton Court Shops is a small three-story group of shops on fashionable Rodeo Drive, and is the last Los Angeles building created by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The entrance to all the shops is off an angular ramp that wraps around an open parallelogram as it leads upward to the shops. Four shops were envisioned with the penthouse space, an apartment. Like the Marin Civic Center, this is yet another example of a secular Wright building with a "steeple". The inverted “V” front elevation stands out in sharp contrast to its traditional, flat-front urban neighbors.

Since the Anderton Court Center's completion, the space has been subdivided. The complex now consists of six small shops, three on each side, each staggered a half-floor from one another and offset by the ramp. The facade, which was once light buff with oxidized-copper-color trim, has been painted white with black detailing. Today's canopy and signage are later additions, not consistent with Wright's original design.

The Anderton Court Shops are on the National Register of Historic Places.