Control tower at LAX has come a long way since 1930
Air traffic control didn't pose a great challenge in the earliest days of Los Angeles International Airport.
Then-known as Mines Field, the facility was chosen to be the site for Los Angeles' official airport in 1928.
In those days, the open field east of Inglewood had a couple of dusty dirt runways that turned to mud when it rained. The city built a new 2,000-foot runway using granite pieces and oil but had no steamrollers to tamp it down. So employees and airport users had to compact the surface by driving their personal cars back and forth over the length of the new runway.
The airport's first permanent structure, Hangar One, didn't get built until 1929. When two additional hangars went up next door in 1930, an observation tower was built in between them.
The airport itself officially was dedicated as Los Angeles Municipal Airport in June 1930.
But since most air-to-ground communications were rudimentary at that point — many small planes did not have radio transmitters yet — manual signaling was still used. A person on the ground using red and white flags to signal pilots during takeoffs and landings sufficed for many years.
The airport's first functional control tower appeared on the field during World War II, when the U.S. Army took control of it. The Army had repurposed the 54-foot-high steel frame structure with an observation cab atop it from its former use as a U.S. Forest Service lookout tower.
But the postwar era would bring rapid change to Los Angeles Municipal Airport.
In 1943, the city's Department of Airports formulated a plan to transform the facility into a full-service modern airport and those plans were acted on following the war.
Passenger terminals were added and the airport's first commercial flight took to the skies in 1946. It was given its current name, Los Angeles International Airport, in 1949. By this time, the need for a bigger, more sophisticated control tower was quickly becoming evident.
Funded by a combination of federal and local funding, a new 80-foot tower began rising from the ground near the old one in January 1951. Like its smaller predecessor, the new control tower had a steel frame base with an open stairway leading up to its cab. Air traffic controllers during this era had no choice but to get in some cardio while traversing those steps every day.
Unlike the 54-foot tower, the new tower's cab had two levels: a top level for controllers and a level directly beneath that to house the then-bulky radar equipment. The tower officially went into operation on Aug. 9, 1951. It cost $57,500.
It would remain there for a decade.
But everything changed once again with another complete redesign of LAX, funded by a $59 mil
lion bond issue passed in 1956. Using the bond money over the next few years, new terminals were built, and the roadway was turned into a loop with a separate entrance and exit to smooth traffic flow.
This called for a different approach when it came to the control tower.
Its location had to be moved into a new site at the entrance to the traffic loop, for one thing. And a lot more thought had to be put into its design and functionality, especially with the addition of updated navigational equipment.
A team of prominent Los Angeles architectural firms, including Pereira & Becket, Charles Luckman Associates and Paul R. Williams designed the revamp, including the tower. The construction firm of Chotiner & Gumbiner was hired for the entire project, and it subcontracted Empire Steel Buildings Co. to build the tower.
Construction on the new tower began in 1958 and it became operational in 1961, a year before the space-age Theme Building opened. The new tower was 12 stories high; at 162 feet tall, it was twice the height of its predecessor.
It was a fully enclosed building for the first time and included an elevator. In addition to housing controllers atop it in a greatly enlarged cab area, the building and a separate office building surrounding it also housed Federal Aviation Administration and LAX offices.
In 1965, the old 80-foot-tower was sold to Riverside International Raceway for $1 to be used at the track as an observation tower near the finish line. In 1974, the 1930 hangar building housing the original observation tower was demolished.
The 1961 control tower, which cost an estimated $1.4 million to construct, served the airport well for the next 35 years. Talk of replacing it began to surface with the opening of the large Tom Bradley International Terminal in 1984, which cut off a big chunk of the taxiing runways from view from the tower.
In 1991, a new control tower design was approved, after much debate over its appearance. The FAA suggested a plain design, but airport officials insisted on something with at least a little local flair to it. The approved design, by architectural firms Siegel Diamond and Holmes Narver, was meant to resemble a palm tree, with fronds dropping to its sides from the top.
The 277-foot tower was 115 feet taller than its predecessor and cost $22 million to build. It was dedicated on March 22, 1996, and went into operation a week later. As of this writing, there are no plans to replace it anytime soon.
As for the 1961 tower, it was originally slated to be used as a back-up. But in 1998, a $1 million renovation transformed the old tower into the Clifton A. Moore Administration
Building for Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that oversees LAX, Ontario and Van Nuys airports.
Sources: Daily Breeze archives. “LAX History,” Los Angeles World Airports website. LAX: Los Angeles International Airport: From Lindbergh's Landing Strip to World Air Center, by Tom Moran, CCA Publications, 1993. Los Angeles Times archives.