Performing arts centers, museums, public parks, and wealthy socialites are not the typical subjects of postwar United States urban and policy histories. Yet, these subjects provide new opportunities to challenge our understanding of the processes that reshaped the nation's postwar urban landscape. This dissertation looks at cultural initiatives and spaces of leisure as a way to understand the larger social, economic, and political forces that shaped Los Angeles after World War II--specifically, the Hollywood Bowl, the L.A. Music Center, the L.A. County Museum of Art, and Elysian Park. The construction and revitalization of these public spaces offers new avenues for examining the role of urban planning and policy in remaking American cities in the postwar era. Each of these spaces would add to a modern urban identity being crafted by metropolitan leaders. On its own, each chapter tells a unique and captivating story of civic negotiation.

Yet, these episodes collectively tell an even more important story about the broader postwar project to remake L.A., as each space was shaped by the same people, agencies, and policies within the short span of twenty-five years. Thus, my primary objective in this dissertation is to examine not only the significance of constructing cultural spaces in the project to remake L.A. into a national cultural epicenter, but also what that story reveals about postwar urban growth and urban renewal policy in Los Angeles. This dissertation invites readers to rethink the parameters of urban renewal by considering cultural and leisure spaces as a lens through which to understand the post-World War II project of city building. This research builds on the work of urban historians, cultural historians, and policy historians to frame a new set of questions about the ways in which cultural institution-building came to fruition through broader urban renewal initiatives.

I argue that the construction and revival of cultural and leisure spaces in Los Angeles after World War II sparked the beginnings of a rapidly growing cultural infrastructure intended to displace New York as the nation's premier cultural metropolis. Further, civic leaders would increasingly rely on urban renewal policy to construct cultural spaces, and in the process come to discover that culture could function well as urban renewal. Yet, the success of these institutions was limited. This emerging concept of culture as urban renewal occurred within the context of a political realignment that saw an extended period of alliance between businessmen, county and city officials, and cultural philanthropists who came together to support pro-growth initiatives, many of which centered on downtown. By rethinking conventional narratives of urban renewal, this research shows how crucial leisure spaces were to remaking American cities after World War II.