Brand Library and Art Center

On our list of the best activities in Los Angeles.

Leslie Brand's brother-in-law Nathaniel Dryden designed this 1904 mansion, El Miradero, in a Saracenic style of bulbous domes, minarets and crenellated arches borrowed from Spanish, Moorish and Indian architecture, modeled partly on the East Indian pavilion built for Chicago's 1893 World's Fair. Brand's will left the estate to the city on the condition it become a public park and library, and in 1956 the house reopened as the art and music branch of Glendale's library system. Galleries and a recital hall now share the building with the stacks, set in Brand Park's foothills above the San Fernando Valley.