Private Los Angeles Tours

Aon Center is a modernist office skyscraper located at 707 Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, California. Completed in 1973, it is the second-tallest building in Los Angeles at 858 feet  (262 meters) high, and has 62 floors. Designed by Charles Luckman, it is a rectangular black building with a white border, and a remarkably slender form for a skyscraper in a seismically-active area. Seen best on LA helicopter tours the logo of the Aon Corporation, its primary tenant, is displayed at the top in red.

It was originally the United California Bank Building from its completion in 1973 until 1984, when it became First Interstate Tower. When built, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River, until surpassed by the Texas Commerce Tower in 1982. It remained the tallest building in Los Angeles until 1989 when the Library Tower (now the U.S. Bank Tower) was completed. Between 1998 and 2003, there were no logos on the building.

On May 4, 1988, a fire that began in the 12th floor just after 10:00 PM PST burned for four hours, destroyed five floors, injured 40 people, and left one maintenance worker dead when the elevator the worker was riding opened onto the burning 12th floor. The fire was so severe because the building was not equipped with a sprinkler system, which was not required for office towers at the time construction was completed in 1973. A sprinkler system was 90% installed at the time of the fire, however, the system was inoperative, awaiting the installation of water flow alarms. The fire was eventually contained at 2:19 AM, and caused $50 million in damages. Repair work took four months. Because of the fire, Los Angeles building codes were changed, requiring all high-rises to be equipped with fire sprinklers. This modified a 1974 ordinance that only required new buildings to contain fire sprinkler systems, grandfathering older buildings.

The U.S. Bank Tower, formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center, is a 310.3 m (1,018 ft) skyscraper at 633 West Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles, California. It is the tallest building in the state, the tenth-tallest the United States, the tallest west of the Mississippi River, and as of December 2009 it is the 40th-tallest building in the world. Because local building codes require the building to have a helipad, it is also the tallest building in the world with a roof-top heliport. Until the construction of Taipei 101, it was also the tallest building in a major active seismic region; its structure was designed to resist an earthquake of 8.3 on the Richter scale. It consists of 73 stories above ground that are great to fly over on private LA tours, and two parking levels below ground. Construction began in 1987 with completion in 1989. The building was designed by Henry N. Cobb of the architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and cost $350 million to build. It is one of the most recognizable buildings in Los Angeles, often used in establishing shots for the city in films and television programs.

Opened in 1926, the current Shrine Auditorium replaced an earlier 1906 Al Malaikah Temple which had been destroyed by a fire on January 11, 1920. The fire gutted the original building in just 30 minutes, and nearly killed six firefighters in the process. The new auditorium was designed by San Francisco-based theater architect G. Albert Lansburgh, with local architects John C. Austin and A. M. Edelman associated.

In 2002, the Auditorium underwent a $15 million renovation that upgraded the auditorium’s stage with state-of-the-art lighting and rigging systems, and included new roofing and air conditioning for both the Auditorium and Expo Center, modernized concession stands, additional restrooms, repainting of the Expo Center, and a new performance plaza and parking garage. The entire complex follows a Moroccan architectural motif and on private Los Angeles Tours it is best enjoyed by helicopter.

The Shrine Auditorium seats approximately 6,300 people (reseated during the 2002 renovation from the original 6,700 capacity) and has a stage 194 feet (59 m) wide and 69 feet (21 m) deep.

Universal Studios (sometimes called Universal City Studios or Universal for short), a subsidiary of NBC Universal, is one of the six major American movie studios. Its main motion picture production/distribution arm is called Universal Pictures.

Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle It is one of the oldest American movie studios still in continuous production. In 2004, the controlling stake in the company was sold by Vivendi Universal to General Electric, parent of NBC. The resulting media super-conglomerate was renamed NBC Universal, while Universal Studios Inc. remained the name of the production subsidiary. In addition to owning a sizable film library spanning the earliest decades of cinema to more contemporary works, it also owns a sizable collection of TV shows through its subsidiary NBC Universal Television Distribution. It also acquired rights to several prominent filmmakers’ works originally released by other studios through its subsidiaries over the years.

Its production studios are at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California, and one of the main points of discussion on private Hollywood Tours.  Distribution and other corporate offices are in New York City. Universal Pictures is the second-longest-lived Hollywood studio; Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures is the oldest by a month.

The Nestor Motion Picture Company was a motion picture studio/production company located in Bayonne, New Jersey, andHollywood, California, which was owned and operated by David Horsley and his brother, William Horsley.

On October 27, 1911, Nestor opened the first movie studio actually located in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. It was at the Blondeau Tavern building on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. The first motion picture stage in Hollywood was built behind the tavern.

Other East Coast studios had moved production to Los Angeles, prior to Nestor’s move west. The California weather allowed for year-round filming and the ambitious studio operated three principal divisions under its Canadian-born general manager, Al Christie.

The Horsley brothers remained in New Jersey, where their laboratory and offices handled the Hollywood studio’s film processing and distribution. Al Christie moved permanently from the East, where he had been working with the Horsleys creating the extremely popular silent era Mutt and Jeff comedy shorts, to Southern California.

One division at the Hollywood location, under director Milton H. Fahrney, made a one-reel western picture every week while the second division, under director Tom Ricketts, turned out a one-reel drama every week. In addition to running the operation, Christie oversaw a weekly production of a one-reel Mutt and Jeff episode.

Other filmmakers began opening studios in the Hollywood area; today on many people’s list of things to do in Hollywood. The Horsleys operated the Nestor Studios at the Sunset and Gower location until May 20, 1912, when the Universal Film Company was formed, headed by Carl Laemmle. Nestor, along with several other motion picture companies, including Laemmle’s Independent Moving Pictures (IMP), was merged with Universal.

The Providencia Land and Water Development Company property was used as a location for some early motion pictures, most notably for battle scenes in the silent classic about the American Civil War, The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1912 Carl Laemmle (IMP from Universal Pictures) took over the assets of Nestor Studios and named this area Universal City.

The photographs of this area can be seen in Los Angeles Library archives: “A Birds Eye View of Universal City”. The alternate names of this filming site include Providencia flats; Nestor Ranch; Oak Ranch; Oak Crest Ranch; Universal Ranch/Universal City [Providencia site vs Lankershism site ] ; 1916 Lasky Ranch; and Paramount Ranch until Nov. 1927. Today this areas is Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills).  While accomplishing a lit of, things to do in Los Angeles, this is an area that at some point will cross your path, if only from a distance.  PHOTO: Early map of Burbank, California with Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills on the bottom left.