The Steel Going Up Around the Ficus at Washington and National Took a Decade to Get Here
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
Culver City Council decided in 2019 that the mature Ficus at Washington and National would be the heart of the city's gateway artwork. That was two years before the artist proposals came in, and seven years before steel started arriving at the corner.
That order explains the structure now going up on the small triangle by the E Line station. A Frame for a Tree is a steel grid, 56 feet by 98 feet, built around a tree the city had already committed to keeping. The new landmark at the city's busiest transit corner is really a setting for something that was already there.
The idea for gateway art is older than the tree decision. Here is how the city's project milestone page lays it out:
City records give exact dates, and they put the artist selection earlier than the milestone page does. A project schedule filed with Council records lists "Artist Selected August 26, 2021." The staff report dates Council's approval of the final design to October 24, 2022. The same staff history describes the site as a triangular, city-owned green space. The 2019 directive kept the healthy, mature Ficus there as part of the art concept.
Because the tree was settled first, every finalist was answering the same brief: design something that works around this Ficus.
The six finalists were Blane de St. Croix, Charles Gaines, Iris Hu, Susan Narduli, Matthew Mazzotta, and Paul Cocksedge Studio. Gaines had been working with trees for about fifty years when he applied.
As Culver City Crossroads reported in August, he is a conceptual artist and longtime CalArts professor, and his work is in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Tate Modern. Starting in the mid-1970s with the series Walnut Tree Orchard, he has used trees to explore how mathematical systems meet natural forms. Westside Current notes that the theme continues in his ongoing Numbers and Trees series.
In Culver City that becomes a gridded steel screen around a living tree. The city describes it as a "viewfinder" that frames the Ficus and the streets around it. It is meant to be seen from the sidewalk, from the upper floors of nearby buildings, and from passing Expo Line trains. The approved design also includes new landscaping, arborist-backed tree protection, and the site's historic Hal Roach Studios plaque. According to the city's 2025 project announcement, lighting will be a subtle part of the work.
Gaines told Westside Current what he hopes the piece becomes:
"I hope that this public work becomes an iconic gateway for Culver City in the same way that Eero Saarinen's 'The Gateway Arch' represents St. Louis in the public mind."
The money follows the same logic. The two developers whose projects reshaped this intersection put up the first funding. City staff reports list $300,000 from Lowe and $580,000 from CLPF/Lincoln Property Company. An initial $300,000 from the city's Cultural Trust Fund brought the total to $1.18 million at that stage.
The final cost grew as the project moved through three phases. Here are the staff report figures:
| Phase | Reported amount |
|---|---|
| Phase I | $87,000 |
| Phase II | $423,000 |
| Phase III, fabrication and installation, with contingencies | $1,491,472 |
| Three phases combined | $2,001,472 |
Most of Phase III goes to the steel. The estimate includes a $1,103,884 contract with Ennis Steel plus a $110,388 contingency. It also covers $252,000 for Dyson & Womack's project management plus $25,200 in contingency.
Council voted unanimously to approve fabrication and installation at its May 27, 2025 meeting. The meeting summary says Phase III comes from the Cultural Arts Fund, which is made up of developer fees restricted to art, not the General Fund. The Ficus has stood through the corner's change from studio lot to transit district, and that change is now paying for its frame.
The schedule has shifted, which is normal for this project. Dyson & Womack's contract was amended five times for added scope, geotechnical work, administrative oversight, and extensions. The staff report names the COVID-19 pandemic as a major cause of delays in 2020.
The most recent change came this fall. In August, Culver City Crossroads reported that installation would start Tuesday, September 8, 2026, and take about six weeks. On September 24, Culver City News reported that the start had moved to mid-October. The city's statements in that article give both a six-week and an eight-week timeline. The city's project page now uses eight weeks and says installation is in progress, with completion estimated for December 2026.
The city plans a public ribbon-cutting to mark the finish, and its project page does not list a date for it yet.
Until then, the work changes the intersection in a few ways:
The frame joins several older layers within a block. The most important is underneath it. The Culver City Historical Society places Hal Roach Studios at 8822 West Washington Boulevard, at Washington and National. The studio opened in Culver City in 1919, closed for good in 1962, and was torn down in 1963. A historical plaque went up at the site in 1980. A 2012 Culver City News retrospective noted that the marker sits in a small park space at National and Washington. Gaines's design incorporates that plaque instead of moving it.
There is more art a short walk away:
Taken together, a 1980 plaque marking a studio from 1919, a station artwork from 2012, a sculpture from 2021, and the new frame around the Ficus sit within a short walk of one another around this triangle.
Long-running civic projects like this one often shape how a part of town feels long after the ribbon is cut. If you live near Washington and National and want to talk about what the new gateway could mean for your block, Greg Jones has followed Culver City since 1987. Schedule a free consultation.
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