How architect Paul Revere Williams fought racism and changed the face of Los Angeles

Creating homes for Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and Lucille Ball made Williams a star.

A trio of new exhibitions shows he belongs among the 20th century’s greats When you fly into the Los Angeles airport LAX, a spindly space-age contraption is the first thing that greets your eyes outside the window.

Built in the early 1960s, the Theme Building – which once attracted travelers to its in-house restaurant, designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, towering above airfields – was built by a supergroup of architects whose structures helped define the city’s midcentury aesthetic: William Pereira, Welton Becket, Charles Luckman and Paul Revere Williams.

Of these architects, Williams, the first licensed Black architect in California, arguably shaped the contours of Los Angeles most deeply.

In the six decades before his death in 1980, Williams completed an estimated 3,000 projects ranging from single-family residences, commercial buildings, affordable housing projects, the Los Angeles county courthouse, a reimagining of the now-razed Ambassador hotel and opulent homes for celebrities including Frank Sinatra , Barbara Stanwyck and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

Perhaps most iconic of all is the Beverly Hills hotel; Williams led its renovation, and its recognizable curlicued sign is scrawled in Williams’s own handwriting.

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