California’s broad landscape suggests endless possibility, a chance to realize your dreams. You can backpack in the Klamath National Forest within Siskiyou County. You can find a slice of Denmark in the Santa Ynez Valley. Or you can immerse yourself in the glittery landscape of the Hollywood hills, the place that has applied a practicality to its dreams by making an industry of them.

You tend to forget about reveries, though, when the 101 freeway slows to a crawl, as it did when I began to navigate the road in Hollywood this spring. Time on my hands, I looked up and caught a glimpse of the 73-story U.S. Bank Tower, referred to as Library Tower by many locals for the 90-year-old actual library and architectural gem across the street that it dwarfs.

Completed in the late 1980s, the iconic Bank Tower is one of those structures that sneak up in vistas to remind you that yes, you’re in Los Angeles, in case you were wondering. It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi for 27 years, until the Wilshire Grand Center’s spire was added this year. Designed by the architect Henry N. Cobb, the building is topped with a distinctive crown that hints at downtown’s Art Deco past. Despite its size, it is not exactly the first building that comes to mind when people think of Los Angeles.

Some cities have a single architectural identity but Los Angeles is known for many. It was an incubator of the American Craftsman style, and it embraced Beaux-Arts, as well as Spanish Colonial Revival and Mayan Revival, which found a powerful advocate in Frank Lloyd Wright. But then Art Deco arrived and proliferated during the decades when movie studios became the cornerstone of an economy that had previously relied primarily on oil. It left a stunning cache of public buildings in its wake.