The heavens open up to L.A. again

THE pristine lawn spreads before you like a quad that's misplaced its college. The six smart guys of the Astronomers Monument glower stonily in your general direction. Beyond them waits the triple-domed Griffith Observatory, our freshly squeegeed window to the universe, or, as observatory director Edwin C. Krupp likes to say, "the hood ornament of Los Angeles."

By Christopher Reynolds

November 2, 2006