Before a single plan was drawn or brick laid, the Herald Examiner Building in downtown Los Angeles, which had been commissioned in 1913 by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, already seemed headed toward historic status.
The building’s designer was Julia Morgan, the first licensed female architect in California who would go on to design another landmark, Hearst Castle. After the building’s namesake newspaper shuttered in 1989, it appeared for a time that the building would follow, making way for a parking lot.