Watch Los Angeles grow building by building since 1880

You can now watch 146 years of Los Angeles architectural history unfold in your browser.

A new interactive 3D map tracks how LA built itself from 1880 to 2026. The project renders one box for every building standing today, dropping it onto the map in the year construction wrapped up. One catch to keep in mind: because it only shows surviving structures, anything torn down along the way isn't on the map.

Why it matters: It gives you an instant visual sense of how the city expanded over nearly a century and a half. Instead of digging through planning archives, you get a clean look at LA's surviving footprint.

Here's the gist: scrub the timeline to watch neighborhoods spring up across the basin year by year.

Proof that the clearest way to understand a city's growth is to watch it pop into existence.