US Bank Tower & the 1970s monoliths

The round tower that was the tallest in the West for nearly thirty years — and the dark 1970s monoliths it grew up among.

Key facts

The cylindrical US Bank Tower (633 W 5th St), once the Library Tower, is 1,018 ft (310 m), completed 1989, designed by Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners; it was the tallest building in the western US from 1989 until 2017 — nearly three decades.
It is Hollywood's favorite tower to destroy on screen — flattened or toppled in Independence Day, 2012, San Andreas and more.
Below it stand the 1970s dark monoliths that gave downtown its first real skyline: the Aon Center (1973, LA's tallest for 16 years) and the black twin towers of City National Plaza, the former ARCO Plaza (1972) — the glass era's severe, flat-topped predecessors.

Narration transcript

Still on your right, that tall cylinder with the glass crown at the top is the US Bank Tower — you may know it as the Library Tower. It went up in 1989, it's just over a thousand feet, and for nearly thirty years, until Wilshire Grand beat it, this was the tallest building in the entire western United States. It's also the building Hollywood loves to destroy — if you've seen a disaster movie flatten downtown LA, odds are this round tower took the hit.

Look at the darker, boxier towers gathered below and around it, the ones with flat tops. Those are the originals — the skyline downtown had before the glass age. The big dark-skinned slab is the Aon Center, finished in 1973, and it was the tallest building in the city for sixteen years. Near it stand the black twin towers of what everyone still calls ARCO Plaza. These are the 1970s monoliths: severe, sheer, flat-roofed because of that old helipad rule, and for a while they were the whole picture of corporate Los Angeles. Round and bright, dark and square — two generations of ambition, stacked a block apart.