Bold New Look, Same Old Hope : New Pershing Square Declaress Confidence, But Can Design Change L.A.’s Social Habits? : Critique

Los Angeles is an intensely private city. Most social life here happens in the home, and, as a result, the city’s residential architecture is far more innovative and hospitable than most of its public buildings or communal places.

When it comes to public parks and squares, Los Angeles is sadly underserved. In keeping with the privateness of our urban life, these spaces are scarce, tawdry and often dangerous. They seldom serve as real meeting places for the population of a fractured city.

This stark contrast between our private and public realms reveals our weakness as a community. If we cannot create a common ground where citizens of all classes and ethnicity will mingle freely, we will always live on the verge of social fragmentation.

These thoughts came to mind as I walked through the newly renovated Pershing Square, our oldest and most urban civic space. Redesigned and reconstructed at a cost of $14.7 million, the new Pershing Square embodies the hope that its reincarnation will counter the stubborn separateness of Anglo and Latino, the affluent and the poor, that plagues downtown Los Angeles.

The renovation has changed Pershing Square out of all recognition. In place of the familiar shabby, shadowy mini-park characterized by scuffed grass and stunted trees, we now have a bold, brave act of architecture open to the sunlight. Where the old square seemed apologetic and neglected, the new layout seems to declare its confidence in a bright future.

But the central questions are: Can an act of architecture change a city’s ingrained social habits? Can the bravest design overcome the mutual suspicions that seem to plague our ethnically diverse metropolis? Can we create a truly urban public place in an overwhelmingly suburban city?

The new Pershing Square, designed by the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta in collaboration with Philadelphia-based landscape architect Laurie Olin and Los Angeles-based Langdon Wilson Architecture & Planning, is thoroughly urban in style. No attempt has been made to pretend that Pershing Square is a park.

The previous layout of the square, dating from 1952, covered an underground garage with a thin layer of landscaping. In the Legorreta-Olin plan hard surfaces dominate and planting is a formal background rather than a central motif.

Sponsored and partially financed by the Pershing Square Property Assn., an organization representing the landholders bordering the square led by developer Maguire Thomas Partners, the renovation divides the five-acre square in two.

The division between the two halves is marked by a 120-foot-tall purple shaft. The free-standing shaft, which mimics a traditional Italian campanile, has a dramatic cascade of water flowing down one sloping side.

The northern half of the square, bordering 5th Street, includes a raised section intended to double as an outdoor stage for public performances. Planted with stately Canary Island palms, this area is the square’s highest point.

Facing the raised section is an informal amphitheater of long, low concrete benches designed to accommodate an audience of up to 2,000 people. The benches are laid out in an abstract pattern in a carpet of grass. Beside the amphitheater area is a small, palm-filled courtyard where all the square’s historic sculptures have been relocated.

The southern half of Pershing Square revolves around a circular pebbled tidal pool fed by a high, narrow aqueduct that connects with the central tower. Several times an hour, surges of water flow from the aqueduct to fill the pool, then drain away.

The southern edge of the pool, parallel with 6th Street, is ringed by a curved concrete bench with a high back. The bench-back is inscribed with a quote from Carey McWilliams’ book “Southern California Country.” The quote ends with the offer of “a ringside seat at the circus” that is Los Angeles.

Two stucco pavilions, painted a vivid yellow, line the square’s Olive Street frontage. One pavilion houses a Los Angeles Police Department substation. The other accommodates the access to the subterranean garage and an outdoor deli operated by the Biltmore Hotel across the street. The deli will be supplemented by six kiosks selling a variety of ethnic food.

The square’s Hill Street frontage is screened by a line of short, pink columns and a tree-shaded promenade lined with planting. Familiar trees, including jacarandas, coral, cedar, orange and liquidambar, have been placed throughout the square.

Despite the trees, what architects call “hardscape” predominates in this design. Most of the surface of the square is paved in beige concrete stamped with a linear pattern, alternated with sections floored with a grayish decomposed granite. Hard-wearing and rough, these surfaces are meant to take heavy traffic.

Six entrances--one at each corner plus two others on Olive and Hill--lead into the square. In that sense, access is more controlled than previously and entry into the square is made more of an event. Although entry is controlled, the edges of the square have been kept low so that the surrounding street facades appear to be invited into the open space.

There are two welcome improvements over the previous layout. First, the garage ramps leading to the underground garage have been reduced in width and are screened by planting. Second, the square is now completely ringed with walkable sidewalks.

An element of playfulness is attempted by the square’s mandatory public art program. However, such gestures as the stylized “earthquake fault line” in charcoal quartzite and black terrazzo with gold accents by artist Barbara McCarren seem more silly than amusing.

A more serious concern is security. Given its recent checkered history, the issue of public safety is crucial to Pershing Square’s success. To this purpose, the open layout, supplemented by strong lighting, provides clear sight lines for the police foot patrols and six full-time rangers from the Department of Recreation and Parks who will watch over the square.

However, the property owners’ association hopes that only law-abiding citizens will frequent the place, and that the local gangs and the homeless transients who have claimed the square in the recent past will stay away.

This understandable concern for security has given the new Pershing Square a somewhat desolate look, especially when empty. Legorreta’s trademark postmodern “Latinismo” architecture seems tense here, as if facing a hostile environment, and the center of the new square needs large crowds to make it friendly.

But then, how could present-day Pershing Square be friendly?

Situated in what has become an uneasy no-man’s-land between Latino Broadway and Anglo Grand Avenue, it is surrounded by a downtown still struggling to assert its identity.

Pershing Square’s recent history of decline is a symptom of that uncertain identity, and its reputation has taken a steep dive since the mid-1980s. Its last moment of glory was the extravaganza it hosted for the 1984 Olympics. Since then, the square has failed to fulfill the official hope that it would become a bridge between downtown’s Anglo and Latino social orbits.

To put it bluntly, Anglo downtown has seemed to turn its back on Pershing Square in recent years.

The Biltmore Hotel undertook a renovation in which the building’s main entry was relocated from Olive Street onto Grand Avenue. A block away from the square, the host of new skyscrapers surrounding the lavishly restored and expanded Central Library to the west has become a major urban focus. As a result, the square has been pushed to the edge of that part of downtown in which the Anglo business community feels at home.

So it’s yet to be seen if the Bunker Hill office community will be seduced into adopting the new Pershing Square. If they return, they will have to be willing to rub shoulders with citizens they seem to prefer to keep at a distance.

If they don’t return, this expensive and ambitious act of architecture will fail to transform a habit of urban apartheid deeply entrenched in the soul of Los Angeles.