Wilshire Boulevard reached downtown's Grand Avenue in the mid-1920s. For most of the following forty years, the block facing the boulevard's eastern terminus remained a parking lot.

One Wilshire opened in 1964 as a thirty-story prestige office tower, at the time the highest building in its part of downtown.

Fifty years later, the building was transformed into the district's preeminent telecommunications "hotel," with space leased to a rich array of computer network and Internet services.

The building has become one of the world's top telecommunications centers and is widely regarded in the industry as the single most important telecommunications hub in the Western U.S. In 2013, it was sold to GI partners for $437.5 million.

Watch a video from L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne on One Wilshire