This is LSANCA03, 420 S. Grand Ave., originally built in 1961 and raised to seventeen stories (minus tower height) in 1968.  The stylized tower design was required by the City Of Los Angeles as a condition of approval of the building's construction.  The building with the famous mural (see below) on it was built in 1948, and is LSANCA02, 433 S. Grand Ave.  The original 1925 433 S. Olive St. building is LSANCA01, heavily remodeled in 1971 after heavy damage from the Saugus earthquake, which killed three Western Electric installers that were crushed by a collapsing bridge.  Together they are collectively known as the "Grand Complex".

LSANCA02 also has a much smaller "rack" type radio tower its roof, containing mostly old 13 foot Andrew parabolics and other miscellaneous, as well as "cornies".  The old radio room, along with the Television Operating Center, Radiotelephone equipment (forerunner of cellular) and Program Operating Center, was on the twelfth floor of this building, directly below the old antenna rack.  The radio room was a veritable museum of ancient Western Electric and Collins radio types, along with 1950s GE radiotelephone transmitters and receivers.  It was completely wrecked out around 1984, and replaced by digital multiplex equipment, while AT&T tried to play "catch-up" with Sprint.

GEP

The twelfth floor also housed the transmitter that linked Mount Wilson with a dedicated N-3 carrier terminal, which was part of the GEP system, called "Echo Fox".  The carrier terminal was on the third floor with the rest of the toll N carrier, and was top secret for years.  A simple patch cord afforded connectivity to the system, and a technician had to be on duty at that location all the time "Echo Fox" was in service to Air Force 1.

LSANCA07

LSANCA07, appropriately named "Airport"  used to be the Serving Test Center for many of the FAA circuits feeding the Los Angeles International Airport.  There was a large scale TN (11 GHz) microwave route linking LA 7 and the "Grand Complex", which provided interconnection with all of the coax cables, as well as the transcontinental microwave routes, out of Grand.  An interesting story about this route has to do with the building of the ARCO Towers downtown in the 1970s.  On its original location, the south tower would have just blocked the path from Grand to Airport.  Negotiations between Pacific Telephone and the developer got the building moved ten feet, so the shot wouldn't be blocked.  Many more such negotiations took place as high-rise development continued downtown, until finally, there was no alternatives left.  The Crocker Center, now the Well Fargo Center, across the street on Grand Ave., effectively blocked a heavily trafficked TD/TH route to Oat Mountain in the early '80s.  All of this traffic was rerouted via L-5E to Sherman Oaks.

All of the shots out of "Grand" are completely blocked now by high rise development; none of the antennas on the unique tower are functional, and the seventieth floor radio room is vacant.  There has been talk for a few years now about dismantling the landmark tower, but to date, nothing has been done.

LSANCA02 MURAL

This work was commissioned by Pacific Telephone and Telegraph to grace the new entrance to the Grand Complex in 1961.  Containing brass sculpture, mosaic tile and various telephone parts including a satellite link made of wall phone hookswitches (added to celebrate "Early Bird" and the launch of Telstar I), it has been part of the Los Angeles "public art" scene ever since.  The same artist originally placed large scale non serif letter above the door that spelled out "Pacific Telephone" in  metal encasements that contained mosaics of polished crushed quartz, and underneath was  spelled out "Part of the Nationwide Bell System" in a streamline-moderne font in cast aluminum.  This was done away with around 1987, replaced by a bland, cast aluminum "Pacific Bell" logo with the asterisk key trademark. Polished black and red granite and marble grace the entrance doors.  Such were the days of the Bell System, when things were done with permanence and built for the ages.  Now, a Butler building suffices for most new buildings!  Some recent AT&T sites have even been housed in converted 7-11 store buildings.
 

LCXR

The bulk of the long lines traffic through this office was commercial switched message and private line, although many important government circuits were also carried.  Extensive LMX and MMX multi-mastergroup multiplex).  505D plants powered the section towards Mojave to the 14th repeater hut, which was the end of each station's respective power loop.

This route, as well as all the other L-3 routes built in 1964, were of the "improved" variety.  Functionally, they were the same as the early L-3, and many parts were interchangeable.  More noticeable changes were to a 12 tube coax which utilized wider diameter tubes, allowing a higher AC voltage potential between center conductor and the shield.  This overcame a problem on the LA-El Paso "A" conversion from L-1, in that the narrower diameter tubes were apt to arc over at points nearest the power feed station, due to a potential of about 5.5 KV existing at the Terminal Main Station of a 75 mile long power loop.  On the El Paso "A", sulfur  hexaflouride gas was used in place of dry nitrogen to charge the cables for about 16 miles out from San Bernardino and Blythe, as well as other power feed stations.

This dangerous gas had to be used, since it would suppress arcing in the cable, where standard dry nitrogen would not.   Another change was from selenium rectifiers in DC power supplies, both at the terminals and in the repeater huts, to silicon.  The  selenium rectifiers in the "early" L-3s proved to be a real maintenance problem around the close of the '70s, although the older lines were never wholesale converted to the newer types of power supplies.  At Los Angeles 2 on the El Paso and Oakland  routes, AT&T wholesale changed out every selenium rectifier stack in the terminals, and never had another problem with them until the day the systems were turned down for good.

Another feature of the "improved" L-3 was the use of the new, solid-state "LMX-2" multiplex in place of the original tube powered and manually regulated LMX-1.  This new multiplex provided pilot tone regulation down to every group of 12 channels, where, with LMX-1, pilots had to be manually  checked and adjusted by technicians daily.  An improved version of the multi-mastergroup "stacker", MMX, was also used, eliminating the use of "submaster groups" in the modulation scheme, which was another maintenance and operational headache for terminal technicians.

GTE LCXR

There was yet another coax route out of LSANCA03, to GTE in Santa Monica.  This was an L-4 system built around the same time as the CORN-LSAN route, and provided large capacity for toll traffic to GTE's Santa Monica toll office.  The terminal on the Santa Monica end was owned and maintained by GTE, a unique situation among all coax cables in the country.  All multiplex equipment was made by GTE's Lenkurt as their 46-A type, rather than Western Electric, and it was completely "U-600" compatible with WECO LMX and MMX equipment.

STEP BY STEP

As late as 1986, there was still a step-by-step switch operating at the Grande Complex, although only for "High Volume Call-In" service (HVCI) for radio television station contest call loads and the like.
 

NOTE: Special thanks to Bob Scarborough for the technical information on this page.

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