Frank Putnam Flint Fountain

The late-Victorian-era Downtown of Los Angeles in 1880 was centered at the southern end of the Los Angeles Plaza area, and over the next two decades, it extended south and west along Main Street, Spring Street, and Broadway towards Third Street. Most of the 19th-century buildings no longer exist, surviving only in the Plaza area or south of Second Street. The rest were demolished to make way for the Civic Center district with City Hall, numerous courthouses, and other municipal, county, state and federal buildings, and Times Mirror Square. This article covers that area, between the Plaza, 3rd St., Los Angeles St., and Broadway, during the period 1880 through the period of demolition (1920s–1950s). At the time (1880–1900s), the area was referred to as the business center, business section or business district. By 1910, it was referred to as the "North End" of the business district which by then had expanded south to what is today called the Historic Core, along Broadway, Spring and Main roughly from 3rd to 9th streets.

The Los Angeles Theatre Center is an institution in Los Angeles, which is operated by the Latino Theater Company. In January 2006, the Latino Theater Company won a lease to operate The Los Angeles Theatre Center for 20 years and got a $4 million grant from the California Cultural and Historical Endowment to renovate the building. In October 2007, the building was re-opened as the new Los Angeles Theatre Center.

The Los Angeles Sister Cities Monument, also known as the Sister Cities of Los Angeles Monument, is a fingerpost and monument in Los Angeles' Civic Center, in the U.S. state of California. The monument was designed by Brigid LaBonge in 2002. Installed at the corner of 1st and Main, in front of South City Hall and across from Los Angeles City Hall, the fingerpost displays the names and distances of Los Angeles' sister cities.

The Nagoya Clock Tower is a clock tower in Los Angeles' Civic Center, in the U.S. state of California. The clock was gifted by the people of Nagoya to those of Los Angeles in 1984, on the 25th anniversary of the Sister City program.

Los Angeles City Hall, completed in 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California, and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council. It is located in the Civic Center district of downtown Los Angeles in the city block bounded by Main, Temple, First, and Spring streets, which was the heart of the city's central business district during the 1880s and 1890s. The Tom Bradley Tower located on the 27th floor is open to the public. Access to City Hall is located off of Main St. The rotunda is located on the 3rd floor accessible by all elevators. To access the Tom Bradley Tower requires the “Express Car Only” for floors 1, 3, and 10 through 22 elevators. Once on the 22nd floor transition to the Gold 22 thru 26 elevator bank. Finally once on the 26th floor, access to the 27th can be reached by stairs or one more elevator. Public restrooms are located on the 3rd and 26th floor.

The Lindbergh Beacon, an aircraft beacon atop the Los Angeles City Hall, operated nightly from April 26, 1928, until just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was restored to its original condition in 2001, and Los Angeles magazine described it as "a tiara of light atop our beautifully restored Los Angeles City Hall." City officials now occasionally put the beacon into operation for special occasions such as the year-end holidays.

Times Mirror Square is a complex of buildings on the block bounded by Spring, Broadway, First and Second streets in the Civic Center district of Downtown Los Angeles. It was headquarters of the Los Angeles Times until 2018. It is currently vacant, with plans being proposed regarding how to best utilize the existing buildings and the total ground area of the site.

The California State Building, originally referred to simply as the State Office Building, was a 13-story PWA Moderne building housing state offices, at the northwest corner of First and Spring streets in the Civic Center district of Downtown Los Angeles. It was completed in 1931 and opened in 1932. Analysis after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake showed it to be structurally unsound and it was demolished in 1975–1976.The building occupied the width of the block from Broadway to Spring and from First Street north to Court Street, with the exception of the Los Angeles Times building which sat at the northeast corner of Broadway and First until the late 1930s. The site had previously been occupied by the Larronde Block, a two-story building of retail stores and offices built in 1882, and which was demolished. The architect was John C. Austin, who was also head of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce at the time. The building cost $1,250,000 to build. Ground was broken August 21, 1930. The dedication ceremony was July 29, 1932, with Vice President Charles Curtis presenting the Flying Cross to trans-Atlantic aviatrix Amelia Earhart at the opening ceremony, which about 300,000 people attended.

The International Savings & Exchange Bank Building (also known as the International Savings Building), was built in the Spring Street Financial District of Los Angeles in 1907. Standing ten floors, it was designed in the Renaissance Revival and Italianate styles by architect H. Alban Reaves (some sources spell Reeves), who had previously designed several structures in New York, including what is now the south building of the historic Schuyler Arms. It stood at 223–229 North Spring Street, the southwest corner of Temple and Spring across Temple from the Main Post Office, and was featured in several postcards from the 1920s. Occupying the ground floor was the International Savings & Exchange Bank, “an institution much in favor among foreign born and descended residents,” which had been incorporated four years earlier in 1903. In later years it served as the City Health Building.

The Los Angeles Times bombing was the purposeful dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times Building in Los Angeles, California, United States, on October 1, 1910, by a union member belonging to the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers (IW). The explosion started a fire which killed 21 occupants and injured 100 more. It was termed the "crime of the century" by the Los Angeles Times newspaper, which occupied the building. Brothers John J. ("J.J.") and James Barnabas ("J.B.") McNamara were arrested in April 1911 for the bombing. Their trial became a cause célèbre for the American labor movement. J.B. admitted to setting the explosive, and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. J.J. was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for bombing a local iron manufacturing plant, and returned to the IW as an organizer. The Times bombing shocked Americans and remains both one of the deadliest criminal acts in U.S. history and the deadliest crime to go to trial in California.

The Los Angeles Police Department Memorial to Fallen Officers is a monument on an elevated plaza at the LAPD headquarters on 100 West 1st Street in downtown Los Angeles. The memorial was funded by the Los Angeles Police Foundation, who raised the $750,000 through private donations. The original tribute to fallen officers that was located at the previous headquarters at Parker Center, and was destroyed in the process of transport when moved to make room for a new jail.

The Caltrans District 7 Headquarters building at 100 South Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles, California serves the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. Built on a $165 million budget, it opened on September 24, 2004. Its futuristic and environmentally friendly design won its designer, Thom Mayne, the 2005 Pritzker Prize. The design and construction of the building was documented across four episodes on the History Channel series Modern Marvels, to demonstrate the unique challenges presented in the design and construction of large buildings over the past two centuries. The 13-story structure, bounded by First Street, Main Street, Second Street and Los Angeles Street, has 716,200 gross square feet for office spaces and an underground parking for 1142 vehicles. Special features include the public plaza named for Eli and Edythe Broad, Motordom (a large four story light installation), the unique glass floor of the third-floor conference room, Code: Survey (168 one-foot-square glass art panels), urban landmarks (4-story high “100” house number and the light-bar cantilevers out of the building), and the Ten Past Five O’clock on the fourth floor.