611 Place is a 189 m skyscraper

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...

 at 611 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, designed by William L. Pereira & Associates

William Pereira

William Leonard Pereira was an American architect from Chicago, Illinois, of Portuguese ancestry who was noted for his futuristic designs of landmark buildings such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco...

 and completed in 1969. The building was commissioned by the now-defunct Crocker Citizen's Bank

Crocker National Bank

Crocker National Bank was a United States bank headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was acquired by and merged into Wells Fargo Bank in 1986.-History:The bank traces its history to the Woolworth National Bank in San Francisco...

, and served as its headquarters

Headquarters

Headquarters denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the top of a corporation taking full responsibility managing all business activities...

 for many years before being bought by AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

. It was the tallest building in Los Angeles upon completion, and the first building to surpass Los Angeles City Hall

Los Angeles City Hall

Los Angeles City Hall, completed 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California, and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council...

 in terms of structural height (many buildings had surpassed City Hall with decorative spires, the first being Richfield Tower

Richfield Tower

Richfield Tower, also known as the Richfield Oil Company Building, was constructed between 1928 and 1929 and served as the headquarters of Richfield Oil. It was designed by Stiles O. Clements and featured a black and gold Art Deco façade. The unusual color scheme was meant to symbolize the "black...

). It consists of a cross-shaped tower clad in vertical aluminum beams, and supported on its west side by an immense, blank slab of concrete

Concrete

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

 running the entire height of the building, which is used to display corporate logos.

The building has a strange habit of making unusual appearances in popular movies; it appeared twice in 2004, first in The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 American science-fiction disaster film that depicts the catastrophic effects of global warming in a series of extreme weather events that usher in global cooling which leads to a new ice age. The film did well at the box office, grossing $542,771,772 internationally...

where it mysteriously appeared in shots of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, and later in Along Came Polly

Along Came Polly

Along Came Polly is a 2004 American romantic comedy film written and directed by John Hamburg, starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston in the lead roles.-Plot:...

, where it was the starting point of an ill-fated BASE jump

BASE jumping

BASE jumping, also sometimes written as B.A.S.E jumping, is an activity that employs an initially packed parachute to jump from fixed objects...

. 611 Place is also destroyed by an earthquake in the 2000 movie Epicenter

Epicenter

The epicenter or epicentre is the point on the Earth's surface that is directly above the hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or underground explosion originates...

.

Since being vacated by AT&T, there have been plans to turn its upper levels into high-end condominiums, in a re-development scheme similar to the one executed on the nearby Eastern Columbia Building

Eastern Columbia Building

The Eastern Columbia Building is a thirteen-story building located at 849 S. Broadway in the Broadway Theater District of downtown Los Angeles, and is considered by many to be the most beautiful of Los Angeles' historic buildings, as well as its finest surviving example of Art Deco architecture...

.