Richfield Tower
Los Angeles built an oil-company cathedral in black and gold, crowned it with winged figures, and demolished it just forty years later for a glass corporate plaza.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A twelve-storey Art Deco headquarters for Richfield Oil in downtown Los Angeles.
Black glazed terra-cotta, gold ornament and sculpted aviation figures turned a commercial office into a vertical advertisement for oil.
Existence timeline
Richfield develops a monumental headquarters.
The black-and-gold building joins the skyline.
The oil company occupies the decorated offices.
Atlantic and Richfield combine as ARCO.
A larger plaza supersedes the older tower.
Most of the building is destroyed; sculptures are saved.
Why it ended
The tower was demolished in 1969 for the ARCO Plaza redevelopment after Richfield merged with Atlantic Refining.
Last confirmed trace
Several rooftop sculptures survived in storage and later display, while photographs preserve the lost black-and-gold facade.
What it left behind
It is frequently cited as one of Los Angeles's most regretted architectural demolitions.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.