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Sunset Boulevard: The Early Years
The Sunset Strip was a dusty winding road flanked with poinsettia nurseries, and scattered buildings. During the 1920s and 1930s various nightclubs, movie studios and a number of architecturally fine apartment houses were built to meet the needs of the free spending movie industry. Due to the influence of Francis Montgomery, heir to vast holdings of land above Sunset, and Billy Wilkerson, owner of the Hollywood Reporter, Sunset Boulevard developed into a sophisticated urban shopping and entertainment district. Just a few blocks west of the Chateau Marmont, the Montgomery family developed the commercial frontage along Sunset to "create an attractive entertainment, shopping and business center that would attract people of high social and financial worth.
Sunset Boulevard Becomes The Glamorous Sunset Strip: The 1930s
From 1930 to 1934, property owners lobbied the Board of Supervisors for the necessary zoning changes that would facilitate Sunset’s development. By 1934, Montgomery, with architect Charles Selkirk, had created the Sunset Plaza shopping district, an upscale retail complex with Georgian stores and offices. Decorators, agents, tailors, publicists, beauty salons and other services were provided in this complex. While shopping areas such as Sunset Plaza were enticing to residents, it was the nightlife of the "Sunset Strip" which made headlines across the nation. The portion of the famous Boulevard in the unincorporated area became the "playground of the stars," augmenting the clubs and restaurants of downtown Hollywood. By the mid-1930s, the Strip was the center of Hollywood’s public social life, and the names of its nightclubs – the Trocadero, Mocambo, Ciro’s and a host of others – were synonymous with the carefree, glamorous existence to which every starlet aspired. Despite the efforts of local law enforcement to curtail illegal gambling and drinking (prohibition was not repealed until 1933), clubs were packed each night with celebrities, Los Angeles socialites, and tourists.
Prohibition was probably the strongest reason for Sunset’s popularity. It was outside of city limits and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department. At the same time, it was very close to Hollywood and to Beverly Hills, making it a convenient place for people to eat, shop, and socialize. By the time Prohibition was lifted in 1933, the Sunset Strip was well on its way to becoming a regional center for upscale and lively entertainment and recreation. Between the 1930s and the 1950s in particular, the Sunset Strip was home to many of the most prestigious and glamorous nightclubs and restaurants patronized by the Hollywood community. The memory of clubs such as the Trocadero, Cafe La Boheme, Mocambo, and Ciro's has far outlived the establishments themselves.
The nightclubs also served an important function in publicizing the idea of Hollywood glamour and excitement to an international audience of movie fans, as they provided a setting for stars to dress lavishly, to socialize together, and perhaps most important, to be photographed.
The Strip Calms Down: 1940s
The beginning of World War II signaled the end of the freewheeling extravagant "Hollywood" lifestyle. Although the image of celebrities as raconteurs was probably more myth than reality, image-makers in the 1940s opted for a more wholesome approach. The excesses of the 1920s and 1930s became passe. In 1944, Billy Wilkerson opened the last of the true nightspots, La Rue, near the Trocadero and Mocambo. But just a year later, dramatic changes took place, which decreased the need for the plethora of nightspots that had developed. Although Los Angeles had experienced a population boom at the end of the war, people began to stay at home with the advent of television. Celebrities, no longer under the control of a strong studio system, also chose to socialize out of the public eye. Political reform and the McCarthy era also produced lower profiles among members of the film community. As a result, the Trocadero closed in 1946 followed by Ciro’s in 1954.
The Strip Amplified: The 1950s Through Today
By the 1950s, the glitz of Las Vegas had eclipsed the glamour of the Sunset Strip. However, in the 1960s, Sunset Boulevard revived as the home of a thriving new music industry. In the 1960s and 1970s, a new wave of clubs opened as the music industry gravitated to the Strip. The Rainbow, the Roxy, Gazzarri’s, and the Whiskey, to name a few, featured up and coming bands such as the Doors and the Mamas and the Papas. Ciro’s was reincarnated as the Comedy Store, a showcase for stand-up comedians. In the 1980s the strip was know for rock bands such as Guns and Roses as well as the opening of Wolfgang Puck’s original Spago Restaurant. Spago’s was the site of numerous entertainment industry related events. In addition to the celebrities at Spago, the food also took a leading role by helping to define "California Cuisine." The Strip reemerged as a center for nightlife in the 1990s with the opening of various clubs and restaurants such as the House of Blues, Key Club, Viper Room, Miyagi’s and Sky Bar at the Mondrian Hotel. Today along with these hot clubs and live music venues, the future is bright – with new developments including hotel properties breaking ground on Sunset Boulevard like the James Hotel, the W, and the Marriott.
Geography
The unique geography of the Strip has drawn businesses and people over the years. Perched at the edge of the hills, the Strip has spectacular views of the Los Angeles basin overlooking the Wilshire Corridor and beyond to Baldwin Hills and the Pacific Ocean. Unlike many of the major east-to-west arteries which cross Los Angeles, the Strip also has a number of curves in it which provide constantly changing views of the hills, the street, and the buildings situated along it. The residential areas to the north contain a unique environment of small streets and hillside houses. South of the Strip, West Hollywood has a significant enclave of historic apartment buildings from the 1920s through the 1940s which continue to draw many people who prefer to live in distinctive buildings with easy access to entertainment, related businesses, and the film and television studios. Since the 1920s, the Sunset Strip has been in a near-constant state of change. As an active and vibrant entertainment and retail environment, it has a high turnover of businesses as tastes and fashions change. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have the same buildings reused by the next generation of businesses, which insures continuity of community memory and recognition of the environments remembered by past visitors. Some of the most important landmarks on the Strip have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The City of West Hollywood recognizes these and others as Cultural Resources. Such designations dramatically strengthen historic preservation efforts by drawing the attention of local residents and visitors to community history.
Architectural and Design Styles
Eclectic Revival
Popular in the 1920s, the revival styles drew on European models such as the architecture of Spain, Italy, and France and the Spanish Colonial architecture of California. Many architects traveled to Europe to sketch and gather ideas, which they employed in their designs. The 1920s were a prosperous period in Southern California during which a lot of building was taking place. Very few structures from the 1920s survive on the strip itself, but there are a few examples of this kind of revival style architecture from the period. Perhaps the best are three of the most prominent buildings on the Strip from any era, all concentrated towards the east end: the Italian Renaissance Revival style Piazza Del Sol, with its venetian ornamentation; Chateau Marmont, which is French Eclectic with Gothic details; and the building on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Laurel Avenue which now houses Greenblatt’s and the Laugh Factory. West Hollywood is especially rich in apartment buildings of these styles, which are concentrated south of the strip in the Fountain Avenue corridor.
Regency Moderne
This style is a popularization of a refined style which combines an eclectic mix of traditional elements such as columns, pediments, dormer windows, but uses them in a stylized way so the elements are elongated, lightened, and streamlined. The style was popular between the end of the Depression and the beginning of World War II. The style is strongly associated with the 1930s and 1940s development of the Strip and Beverly Hills in both residential and commercial architecture. A conservative style when compared to both the severity of 1920s Modernism and the excesses of the 1920s Period Revival styles, Regency Moderne nonetheless left its mark on the areas of Los Angeles developed during the 1930s and 1940s.
Art Deco
This style gained popularity in the late 1920s and continued through the early 1930s. The style derived from the 1926 Exhibition Des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels in Paris, where designers were challenged to produce household objects, luxury furnishings and clothing with new materials and modern manufacturing processes. While there are not many Art Deco buildings on the Sunset Strip itself, one of the finest examples of the style in Los Angeles, Sunset Tower (the Argyle Hotel), is located here. The frieze over the entrance, with its low-relief, stylized scene of modern modes of transportation, is a good illustration of the characteristic combination of technology and art in the Art Deco style. A related style seen on the west end of the Sunset Strip is Streamline Moderne, a popularized form of modernism that was widely used in the 1930s. Characteristics of this style include plain curving wall surfaces, horizontal bands of windows, and the stepped profile of the buildings.
Googie
The Sunset Strip retains one classic example of an expressionistic, populist Moderne style called "Googie." Ben Frank’s (now Mel’s Diner). There were several examples of this type built on Sunset Boulevard as well as others throughout Los Angeles (notably Ship’s and Norm’s), but Ben Frank’s is the only example remaining on Sunset today. Googie is a populist modern style, like Streamline Moderne, meaning that it was practiced by builders and developers as well as by architects. It was used mainly for commercial buildings, primarily restaurants, in the 1950s and 1960s. Exaggerated angles and curves, bright colors, and strong, dominating roof forms that seem to float over large expanses of glass characterize the style. The building from which the style takes its name, Googie’s Coffee Shop (John Lautner, 1949), was on the current site of 8000 Sunset, directly east of the famous Schwab’s Drug Store at Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. Ben Frank’s (at 8585 Sunset) is one of the best remaining examples of the style around Los Angeles. The main façade of The Standard (at 8300 Sunset), with its undulating balconies, has some Googie character to it as well.
Billboards
Above the roofs of the buildings, the Sunset Strip is a veritable forest of billboards. This proliferation began in the 1960s, and for some has now come to define the Strip. The most famous image was the Marlboro man, whose towering image was replaced replaced by a billboard advertising alcoholic beverages. A variation on the theme, the billboards covering the windowless sides of buildings, began here. Video billboards are a recent addition, following a short-lived but dramatic experiment with a moving image projected several stories high onto the side of an office building near Sunset Plaza. The Sunset Strip’s popularity as a location for billboards is due primarily to two factors: geography and the local entertainment industry. The Strip is a major path of travel between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Pacific Palisades, areas with populations of affluent and influential residents, as well as being a major regional center of night life. The area was relatively unregulated prior to 1984, when the city of West Hollywood was established. By this time, billboards for the music industry, television, and movies were a prominent feature of the Strip’s landscape.
* Provided by the City of West Hollywood’s Historic Preservation Department
