The culmination of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ decades-long ambition to build the world’s premier film museum, the Academy Museum’s building had an equally long first act as the May Company building. The Los Angeles Conservancy has called the 1939 retail landmark “the grandest example of Streamline Moderne architecture remaining in Los Angeles.” The building is also an officially designated City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.

Hidden behind the mirrored-glass front of 8949 Wilshire Boulevard sits the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an organization that has celebrated and chronicled the art of filmmaking for almost a century. Although the Academy’s operations are dispersed across many locations, the headquarters oversees the Academy Awards, the Academy’s membership program, marketing and communications, and hosts the Academy Governors when they meet to steer the organization’s future.

Originally established in 1928, just a year after the Academy was founded, the Academy Library was housed in various temporary locations before 1991, when it finally settled in its current home at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive holds over 230,000 items. Located in Hollywood, it has one of the most diverse and extensive motion picture collections in the world, including all Academy Award–winning films in the Best Picture and Documentary categories as well as many other Oscar-nominated films. As one of the Academy’s research and preservation arms, the Pickford also plays an important role in the pre-production of every Academy Awards ceremony.

Completed in 1956, the unusual round structure, with its curved awnings on each level and a tall spike emerging from the roof, was designed by architect Louis Naidorf to resemble a stack of records on a turntable spindle. From 2013 to 2015, it also played a key role in Hollywood’s most important event: the orchestra for the Academy Awards performed live in the Capitol Records studios while the Dolby Theatre hosted the ceremony a few blocks away.

The Ambassador Hotel had many incarnations between its opening in 1921 and its demolition in 2005. It established Wilshire Boulevard as the hub of an expanding Los Angeles, and its Cocoanut Grove nightclub served as a playground for the rich, famous, and influential, including America’s biggest film stars. The venue also hosted six Academy Awards ceremonies between 1930 and 1943 in its Fiesta Room.

When the Los Angeles Biltmore opened in 1923, it was the largest hotel west of Chicago and helped establish downtown Los Angeles as an entertainment hub in the 1920s and ‘30s. The Biltmore’s ornate exterior—with gold details, fountains, and marble columns—concealed a semi-secret speakeasy for much of Prohibition. In addition to being the site of several notable film shoots, the hotel hosted the ceremony eight times from 1932 to 1942.

For almost a century, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, now the TCL Chinese Theatre, has been the beating heart of Hollywood tourism. The venue, named for its giant Chinese pagoda structure, hosted the Academy Awards from 1944 to 1946. Additionally, the Chinese Theatre offers a personal encounter with film history through the iconic hand- and footprints left by Hollywood stars in the cement out front from the 1920s to today.

Hollywood’s historic Taft Building, LA’s first high-rise office tower, served as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ headquarters from 1935 to 1946. During the movie industry’s Golden Age, this 12-story structure at the famous corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street included the offices of such luminaries as Charles Chaplin and Will Rogers, as well as those of many influential agents, casting companies, publicists, and entertainment lawyers.

From 1929 to 2001, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences staged 73 award ceremonies at nine different venues. The range of sites reflects the diverse eras and ceremony formats of the Academy Awards, as well as the ever-changing demands of putting on an industry event with a global audience. However, on March 24, 2002, film’s most important night found a bespoke home in the then brand-new Kodak Theatre, now the Dolby Theatre.