Mutual Benefit Life Building (5900 Wilshire), 1971
Los Angeles, CA
1971
Pereira & Associates
When completed in 1971 by the firm of William Pereira & Associates, the Mutual Benefits Life Building was one of the tallest buildings on Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile. Situated across from Pereira-designed Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with which it shares similar planning and water features. The building is flanked by two smaller structures to create the Mutual Benefits Life Plaza. Thom photographs the triumverate from above in slightly modified one-point perspective. The tower appears as an International Style parental figure, flanked by two identical offspring. In other photos, Thom emphasizes the tower’s great height, all 32 stories captured from a distance, or photographed from below as its vertical elements reach into the sky. In the background lay the city’s sprawling, low-rise neighborhoods, a sharp contrast to Wilshire Boulevard’s increasing number of Late Modern tower complexes and corporate plazas.
References:
“Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, Building, Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, CA,” Pacific Coast Architecture Database, University of Washington, Seattle.
“William Pereira,” Los Angeles Conservancy, web.
James Steele, ed., Wiliam Pereira, University of Southern California Guild Press and Balcony Press, 2002.
Ruth Wallach, Miracle Mile in Los Angeles: History and Architecture, The History Press, 2013.