In 2006, the interchange was officially renamed in the memory of Los Angeles traffic and weather reporter Bill Keene.

The four-level reinforced concrete structure was designed by a team of engineers and built by the James I. Barnes Construction Company.

Although it was finished in 1949, it was not put into full use until the freeways it served were completed and opened on 22 September 1953.

During the 1960s, Dick Whittinghill on radio station KMPC sometimes called it the Four Letter Interchange.

Its distinctive architecture has long made it a symbol of Los Angeles' post–World War II development, and it appears on numerous postcards from the 1950s and 1960s.