A Child’s-Eye View

“Like a big jigsaw puzzle, the 30-foot, 2,000-pound chandelier was put back together and rehung in the rotunda.” The heck with faceless bureaucracy. This town’s municipal seat is a 1920s Mission-meets-Deco palace at Temple and Main streets. “City Hall: The Heart of Los Angeles,” an illustrated children’s paperback from Beverly Hills-based Tallfellow Press, hails the restoration of the building, largely completed in 2001. Produced at the behest of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the City Hall saga unfolds in text by Debbie Bertram and Susan Bloom, while artist Aileen Leijten’s stylized borders and retro-flavored tableaux celebrate the building’s tile work, Byzantine-esque pendant lamps and other decorative delights. Out: Formica elevator cars installed during the ‘50s. In: Meticulous reproductions of the original bronze cars, recast from the original designs.