Wilshire Grand Center

윌셔 그랜드 센터

Wilshire Grand Center is a glass skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. With its spire it reaches 335 m and has 73 floors, which makes it the tallest building in California by total height, and the tallest in the United States west of Chicago. It is topped by a sail-shaped crown and a spire lit by LEDs.

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At a glance

Country: United States
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Built: 2017
Height: 335 m
Type: Skyscraper

Quick answers

Where is Wilshire Grand Center?

Wilshire Grand Center is in Los Angeles, USA, United States.

When was Wilshire Grand Center built?

Wilshire Grand Center was built in 2017.

How tall is Wilshire Grand Center?

Wilshire Grand Center is about 335 m tall.

A glass skyscraper topped by a sail-like crown and spire, the tallest building in Los Angeles.

It opened on 23 June 2017. The building holds the 889-room InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown hotel, offices and shops. The Korean company Hanjin Group owns it. The complex was estimated to cost 1.2 billion dollars, and it won a structural engineering award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in 2019.

An old hotel and a new tower

The site first held the Hotel Statler, which opened in 1952 and later became the Hilton and then the Wilshire Grand Hotel. It hosted famous guests such as President John F. Kennedy and Pope John Paul II. Hanjin's chairman Cho Yang-ho wanted to revive the site with a landmark, so the old hotel closed on 31 December 2011 and was knocked down from 2012 to 2013 before the tower was started.

Building it

Construction began on 15 February 2014 with a record concrete pour: about 16,500 cubic metres in just 20 hours, making a base roughly 5 metres thick. The tower stands on bedrock called the Fernando Formation. The topping out ceremony was held in March 2016, and the spire was lifted into place that September. The spire weighs about 91,000 kilograms and adds about 90 metres.

Sky lobby and sail

The sail-shaped crown glows with programmable LED lights, which have shown logos and colours at night. Unusually for modern Los Angeles, the building has no flat roof, because it got an exception from the city's helipad rule thanks to its strong concrete core. The hotel's lobby is on the 70th floor, reached by double-deck express elevators, and a bar on the 73rd floor is open to the sky.

Fun facts

Counting its spire, it is the tallest building in the United States west of Chicago.
It holds a world record for one of the biggest single concrete pours.
It is the tallest building in California if you count the spire.
The bar on the 73rd floor is open to the sky.
Its spire adds about 90 metres to the building's height.