Griffith Observatory: The Gift of a Complicated Man

Griffith J. Griffith donated three thousand and fifteen acres of his Rancho Los Feliz estate to the City of Los Angeles in eighteen ninety-six, creating what is now Griffith Park, the largest municipal park in a major American city. It was a considerable gift.

Seven years later, in nineteen oh three, Griffith shot and severely wounded his wife in a Santa Monica hotel room. She survived. He was convicted, sentenced to two years in San Quentin, and served about twenty months of it. After his release, he left one hundred thousand dollars in his will for the construction of an observatory on the hilltop he had donated. The city, after some deliberation, accepted the bequest.

Griffith Observatory opened on May fourteenth, nineteen thirty-five, on a hilltop visible from most of the Los Angeles Basin. It is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, partly because Rebel Without a Cause filmed a climactic sequence there in nineteen fifty-five and partly because on a clear night you can see it from nearly anywhere in the city below.

The observatory has admitted the public free of charge since the day it opened. That was Griffith's stipulation: knowledge of the stars should not be available only to the wealthy. He said that himself, before the hotel incident. The city kept the stipulation and built the observatory. Whether the gift redeems the man is a question the building has declined to answer.