Century City is a 176-acre (712,000-m2) commercial and residential district on the Westside of the city of Los Angeles. It is bounded by Westwood on the west, Rancho Park on the southwest, Cheviot Hills, Beverlywood on the southeast, and the city of Beverly Hills on the northeast. Its major thoroughfares are Santa Monica, Olympic, and Pico boulevards (its northern boundary, central artery, and southern boundary, respectively), as well as Avenue of the Stars and Century Park East and West. Century City is an important business center, and many firms and executives - particularly those with ties to the film, television, and music industries - have offices there.
Once a backlot of 20th Century Fox, which still has its headquarters just to the southwest, the Fox studio commissioned a master-plan development from Welton Becket Associates, which was unveiled at a major press event on the "western" backlot in 1957. In 1961, after Fox suffered a string of expensive flops, culminating in the box-office disaster Cleopatra, the film studio sold about 180 acres (0.73 km2) to developer William Zeckendorf and Aluminum Co. of America, also known as Alcoa. The new owners conceived Century City as "a city within a city." In 1963, the first building, Century City Gateway West, was complete, followed the next year by Minoru Yamasaki's Century Plaza Hotel.
