The Simon WIESENTHAL Center in Los Angeles is dedicated to promoting tolerance and understanding among different ethnic groups, though its primary focus is on Eastern Europe and the Holocaust. The Center features exhibits which promote the idea of tolerance by bringing photographs, historical artifacts, stories, and art work from different places. The Center also presents speakers on different subjects, concerts by groups from around the world, and other community-oriented and public events intended to foster the discussion of ethnic conflict both past and present and to nurture agreement among groups for the future.

The Center also contains a major research center in which researchers and the public can delve into issues of the Holocaust, ethnic conflicts in different parts of the world, hate crimes committed around the world, and literature examining these and similar issues. This is another feature of the Center--it enables the public to meet historians, political leaders, artists, and others with something to say about tolerance and the growth of intolerance and ethnic violence in the world today.

The neighborhood is busy as far as traffic is concerned, but this is not a neighborhood with a lot of people on the street. the Center is thus separated somewhat from the neighborhood, which is unfortunate considering the nature of the events conducted there

The reception is polite and quiet, in keeping with the sense that one has entered a special place and that it is a place where the individual makes his or her own connection with the spiritual and the philosophical. The garden has the same effect--this is a place for contemplation and reflection and not a place where one is proselytized.

Between the Mark Taper Forum and the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion is a large open square which over the years has become the home for public art and public performances. Originally, this was truly an open space, with nothing between the two buildings but sidewalk. In an effort to rejuvenate the area, the Los Angeles Music Center fountain was commissioned for the complex and would become a central artistic element in what has become a public art space. The fountain is a major addition and appeals to a lot of people who visit the center. What is most apparent about the center is that while it is set back from the street and somewhat difficult to get to, it is always crowded with visitors.

Hollyhock House itself has been recently restored. It was allowed to fall into disrepair in the 1950s, and much of the exterior and interior alike have been restored. Some of this is different than originally intended, notably in some of the furnishings and the tiles, but the overall effect is as originally intended. The size of the building is hidden by the foliage and by the shape itself, and from the north side you can only see a portion of the structure without moving around it to the west.

Hollyhock House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was built in 1920. It is a Mayan-style building that took four years to construct. It is a massive complex of individual units, courtyards, gardens, pergolas, and bridges. The whole is a mass of poured concrete. There are relatively few windows in this structure. In a way, the building is a maze, as fitted the desires of Aline Barnsdall, who c