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Parker Center

1950s architecture in the United States1955 establishments in CaliforniaBuildings and structures demolished in 2019Buildings and structures in Downtown Los AngelesCivic Center, Los Angeles
Demolished buildings and structures in Los AngelesGovernment buildings completed in 1955Government buildings completed in 2009Government of Los AngelesHeadquarters in the United StatesLandmarks in Los AngelesLos Angeles Police DepartmentModernist architecture in CaliforniaOffice buildings in Los AngelesWelton Becket buildings
Parkercenter LAPD
Parkercenter LAPD

Parker Center, initially named the Police Administration Building or Police Facilities Building, was the former headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1955 until October 2009. It was located in Downtown Los Angeles at 150 North Los Angeles Street. Often nicknamed "The Glass House", the building was named for former LAPD chief William H. Parker in 1966.The LAPD moved to a different headquarters building in 2009 after the Parker Center became outdated. After the building was shifted to mostly secondary use, and attempts to preserve the building failed, the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering recommended its demolition. Demolition and razing of the Parker Center was approved in 2017, and completed in 2019. Plans to replace the building with the Los Angeles Street Civic Building were scrapped in 2020 due to a lack of funds.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Parker Center (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Parker Center
North Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles Little Tokyo

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Latitude Longitude
N 34.051926 ° E -118.240748 °
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Parker Center

North Los Angeles Street 150
90012 Los Angeles, Little Tokyo
California, United States
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Parkercenter LAPD
Parkercenter LAPD
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1971 L.A. federal building bombing

On January 28, 1971, at 4:30 p.m. PST, an explosion in the second-floor men's room of the 300 North Los Angeles Street federal building in California, United States, killed 18-year-old employee Tomas Ortiz, a resident of City Terrace. Ortiz was a student at L.A. Trade Tech, and a part-time employee of the General Services Administration, assigned to the Internal Revenue Service. News accounts variously described him as a "janitor" and a "mail orderly."Ortiz's right leg was blown off below the knee, and his left leg was partially severed. He also suffered "severe head injuries," and died en route to the hospital. The coroner declared his cause of death was a combination of skull fractures, brain lacerations, and blood loss from the leg injuries.The bomb ripped a 4 ft (1.2 m) by 5 ft (1.5 m) hole through the wall. The blast was powerful enough to shatter the washbasins in the bathroom and damage the washrooms on the floors above and below the bomb site. Water lines and electric circuits were also broken.The morning after the explosion, the Los Angeles Times reported, "An investigation was underway to see if Ortiz was involved in placing the bomb in the building. The federal building has been under tight security for several months because of a series of bombings of public buildings. Guards use metal detectors at the entrances, and packages are searched." However, people not carrying packages were not searched, and a second and third entrance had little or no security controls. On Sunday, law enforcement told the L.A. Times that there was no obvious "militancy" in Ortiz's background and "absolutely no evidence" that he was involved in planting the bomb.In April 1971, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty suggested that there was a connection between the federal building bomb and a Chicano Moratorium march that had occurred the same weekend. At the time of the 1974 LAX bombing it was noted that the FBI had not identified any suspects in the 1971 federal building bombing and the case remained open.Historians generally attribute the bombing to the Chicano Liberation Front, which claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in the Los Angeles area in 1970 and 1971. Ortiz's death was described as "obviously accidental" in the Los Angeles Free Press in 1971 and "accidental and unintended" in a 2000 review of patterns in American domestic terrorism. The CLF never claimed responsibility for nor commented upon the federal building bomb; if it was CLF, Ortiz was the only fatality—indeed the only casualty of any kind—as a consequence of their bombing spree. Tomas "Tommy" Ortiz was born September 17, 1952, in El Paso, Texas. He lived with his parents on Volney Drive, and was a graduate of Roosevelt High School. He was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.