LOS ANGELES — The room is a marvel of architectural oddities. On one wall a cathedral-sized window frames the Eastside skyline. Facing it, several rows of wood-backed theater seats fan out, arching up at a dizzying angle to the ceiling three stories up.
The lone piece of furniture, a bedlike platform, stands on a pedestal in the center of the room.
Unchanged since the last patient left Los Angeles County General Hospital 14 years ago, the operating room encapsulates the rich opportunities and huge challenges for an institution that became too old and decrepit to go on as it was but is too much of a civic treasure to discard.
