SIDE STROLL
WESTIN BONAVENTURE HOTEL

Westin Bonaventure Hotel
404 South Figueroa Street
Open 24 hours

To your right, a walkway crosses high over Flower Street to connect the Ketchum Y to the cluster of cylindrical towers that form the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, designed by John Portman and Associates, 1974-1976. The approach to the Bonaventure looks like one Dorothy could have taken on her way to Oz. In 1910 L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. "This first Oz book," writes Kevin Starr in Material Dreams, "functions as a prophetic probe into the inner imaginative texture of the mass migration of Midwesterners to Oz/Southern California and the Emerald City of Los Angeles.... Los Angeles, in other words, was Oz come true; Southern California as a whole was Baum's Oz dream materialized."

The hotel has been the site of several movies, including In the Line of Fire, in which Secret Service Agent Clint Eastwood foiled a would-be presidential assassin.

Cross Hope Street and proceed south to the top of the...