The city-owned empty lot, the site of TRIANGLE SQUARE, the first Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing, on a rainy day in 1930. B. H. Dyas’s Department store, a casualty of The Great Depression became The Broadway and Wilkes Vine Street Theater, seen center frame, began showing movies in place of live theater.
“I don’t think anyone could make a legitimate theater in Los Angeles a profitable venture.” – James A. Doolittle, Director Huntington Hartford Theater and The Greek Theater.” – 1964
Just like Tara, it was the land that mattered most. And for the Wilkes Brothers, two allegedly wealthy mid-west oilmen, investing in real estate’s increasing value, was the way to go.
The brothers partnered with Cecil B. DeMille in building a theater at 1735 North Vine Street above Hollywood Boulevard. When the deal fell through, the Wilkes brothers took their money and the architectural plans of Myron C. Hunt and H. C. Chambers immediately moving the site of their new theater further down Vine Street near the corner of Selma avenue. On 09 March, 1926, immediate construction began after landowner Jacob Stern leased the site property located at 1613-1619 Vine to Frank R. Strong and John F. Wilson for a 99 year term at a rental costing $1,692,000. The theater ‘s combined cost including house and furnishings estimated at $500,000.
The construction of the Wilkes Vine Street Theater, April 1926.
Famous Players-Lasky Movie Studio is seen upper left while The Hollywood Rooftop Ballroom is seen on the upper right, the current location of Bed, Bath & Beyond. Photos USC
The Wilkes Vine Street Theater and Shops nearing completion in late 1926.
Photo USC Collection.
Wilkes Vine Street Theater nearing completion in November, 1926
The theater was leased to Alfred Galpin and Thomas Wheaton Wilkes for the production of legitimate plays, at a twenty year rental costing $1,275,000. Said Wilkes: “I am optimistic over this enterprise. If I were opening a theater downtown at the present time, I might be trembling over the outcome. But here I feel perfectly sanguine as regards the future. The more theaters that Hollywood has, the more it will attract the theatergoing public.
“In this playhouse we are attempting to cater only to a very discriminating audience. We feel that the location is ideal, The availability of parking space enters into this very largely, because it is undoubted that a great number of our patrons will motor to this theater. The Vine Street will be easily accessbile to this group of people since it is situated on a main traffic highway. Nor is it more than a step from the streetcar for those who use that means of transportation”
By 1926, Hollywood was becoming modern in its approach to architecture and design. The Vine Street interior, supervised by Dickson Morgan, the theater’s technical director, was made charming by virtue of its simplicity. A neutral shade of brown carpeting dominated while the seating blended red with delicate stripes of gold. The balcony lounge was decorated primarily in green and the balcony design gave the illusion of jutting right out close to the stage. Because of the closeness of the balcony to the stage, as well as the slope of the floor, set height was limited to not taller than eight feet. The conventional frame around the proscenium was eliminated and the footlight lighting synchronized with the rising of the curtain, eliminating lights shining on the curtain.
The theater, lit by two crystal chandeliers, a minimum of side and drop lights enhanced the theater’s warmth and the ceiling, suggesting the oriental note in its use of pastel shades which are also carried out in the lighting. The entire auditorium was completely modern.
The opening night premiere in January 1927 was a gala arc-light affair attended by the who’s who of the film industry with authoress, Adela Rogers St. John as mistress of ceremonies and well wishes from President Taft for the success of the Vine-Hollywood area.
The rear auditorium of the Vine Street Theater in 1926. Two large crystal chandeliers flank both sides of the auditorium.
The first play Wilkes chose was a controversial staging of Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” starring a much-talked-about actor named Leslie Fenton. Fenton’s first night performance, before the elite of first-nighters, received such enthusiastic applause he stopped the staging with a few words of appreciation. Within days, the city prosecutor received complaints that An American Tragedy contained obscene portions, most notably a bedroom scene. While agreeing to modify the scene, Wilkes asserted the play “had great moral purpose” and invited ministers to view it. Controversy fueled the box-office
Despite what was to come, A. G. Wilkes was an excellent managing director of the Vine Street Theater. One after the other he secured among his plays: Broadway, An American Tragedy, The Captive with Helen Menken and Basil Rathbone and The Noose. It was he who brought out a New York director to handle the twelve scenes and large cast of An American Tragedy as well as insisting that none of the controversial scenes be cut. Management proposed a panel of clergy, doctors, lawyers, journalists and club women in deciding censorship of any play. “How much better that would be than having the police decide what we shall see and what shall be taboo,” Wilkes said.
New York stage actors, brought to Hollywood by motion picture producers, doubled in both stage and motion picture work when appearing at the Vine Street Theater. In rapid succession stars crossing the footlights included: Helene Millard, Leslie Fenton, Joseph Schildkraut, Nana Bryant, William B. Davidson, Henry Kolker (also directing), Glenda Farrell, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Brown, Allen Vincent, Lois Wilson, Maurice Costello, Florence Eldridge whose husband, Fredric March, was starring in The Royal Family of Broadway at the Pasadena Playhouse.
In July 1927, telephoned death threats and acts of violence were threatened by the actor’s union against the Vine Street Theater for presenting popular plays with non-union actors. Raymond Hitchcock, actor and theater investor in the production of the musical The Geisha, was threatened by Actor’s equity that he could not work on stage with non-union actors. If Hitchcock appeared in any capacity, he would be shot, according to a telephone call he received. Unlike George M. Cohan, who closed his theaters rather than bow to Actor’s Equity, Mr. Hitchcock decided against appearing. “I came here thinking to have an interest in the production but found an impossible situation and I can’t do it. I’d be suspended from the stage for five years if I did.”
The theater offered to make the entire cast Equity but equity refused membership saying they already had enough Equity members for whom they want work. Refusing new members was a right granted in the Equity agreement with producers. The cast the producers selected had better voices and a fresher appearance than the chorus girls Equity wanted cast but Equity said it acted within its rights because producers would not guarantee two-weeks salary and refused to put up a bond for the salary guarantee.
Although Hitchcock did not appear in the play, the opening n ight house was planted with hoodlums intent upon disturbing the performance with all manner of noises. Management decided performances would continue despite any action Equity might take as a fight to the finish for independence and freedom of labor against union tyranny.
The theater went dark for a time in the summer of 1927 then re-opening in November re-dedicated as a theater producing original plays only. Edward Clark, the new lessee and managing director decided that with the amount of local writers available, several promising new plays might be developed. Clark then wrote and acted in his own play “Relations,” a comedy with Jewish-American characters.
By 1928, Alfred G. Wilkes had passed through voluntary bankruptcy, listing his liabilities as nearly $1,000,000, and his assets as $2358. His creditors received .0119 cents on the dollar. A year later, Wilkes was indicted by a federal grand jury for tax fraud for “willful” failure to pay $16,464.50 due on the receipts of the Wilkes Theater in San Francisco (now, The Geary Theater) and given a suspended sentence and three years to clear his debt. Wilkes failed to pay the government the 10 percent amusement tax then demanded on all theater tickets, diverting the funds for his personal use. Then, Wilkes and 16 Oil executives of the Italo Petroleum Corporation were ordered to stand trial for mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Although claiming personal bankruptcy, it was discovered that distribution of approximately $10,000,000 in secret profits were made to Wilkes and sixteen other officers and directors of the oil company. Wilkes paid $55,000 to buy off a judge hearing his case and had hidden 156,783 shares of common stock, 2,070 shares of preferred stock and $186,088 in cash.
Wilkes was given two years prison sentence and $5,000 on the conspiracy count and one year prison sentence and $1000 fine each of two mail fraud counts, sentences to run concurrently. Wilkes appealed the sentences and died 16 February 1937 at age 57 before resolution. His brother, Thomas W. Wilkes passed away the year before.
Edward Everett Horton across from the Vine Street Theater in March 1930. B. H. Dyas Department store is seen in the upper left and the Brown Derby on the right.
The theater changed hands in February 1928 when Edward Everett Horton took over management of the Vine Street Theater. Wilkes name was removed from the side marquees with a new electric sign replacing it. Horton augmented his stock company of actors with his theater friends and the best material available. Among his actors were Marie Dressler, Lois Wilson, Allen Vincent, Leatrice Joy, Florence Eldridge, Ralph Forbes and a varied diet of ARMS AND THE MAN, HER CARDBOARD LOVER, THE SWAN, ON APPROVAL and THE GOSSIPY SEX.
After a year, Horton vacated the final months of his contract and moved downtown to the MAJESTIC, turning his lease over to S. George Ullman and Associates bowing in a play, WEAK SISTERS, with Franklin Pangborn and Priscilla Dean. Although loath to explain the reason for his quick departure, Horton later admitted that the matinee business was not strong in Hollywood. Matinee business at The Swan was excellent but other plays were less successful. The matinee trade is important with expensive productions, casts of well-known and highly paid supporting players. “I think about two weeks exhausts the business from this district. Another factor was a lack of casual drop-in trade.” By the end of 1929, Horton had abandoned Edward Everett Horton Productions, deciding to concentrate solely on his film career. “There are leagues for everything else under the sun, but the theater which lies so close to our hearts is left to get along the best it may. It’s friends have nothing to say. Only enemies speak against it with their demands of censorship which will eventually strangle it,” Horton said.
Franklin Pangborn took over the remainder of Horton’s lease in February 1929 investing in and appearing in original productions. Pangborn played the part of Roy Lane, a hoofer of meager talent but saturated with egotism and ambition in BROADWAY. Pangborn hired Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. to make his third stage appearnce, this in a Phillip Barry comedy-drama, THE YOUNGEST. Marjorie Rambeau appeared in MERELY MARY ANN and WHAT A WOMAN WANTS. Pangborn left the Vine Street in December 1929 but the theater continued with some fine plays, most notably ROPE’S END with Dwight Frye in a grimly suspenseful intellectual murder play similar to the Leopold and Loeb case in Chicago.
Another hit play, PHILADELPHIA was cut short after three weeks when the Vine Street Theater was sold for $800,000 to a syndicate of Vancouver capitalists intent upon replacing the theater with a 13 story Class “A” office building, adding eleven stories to the present theater structure. The capitalists also purchased a site next to the Brown Derby building for $250,000 for a hotel for women as well as spending $620,000 for the northeast corner of Vine and Selma for a 13 story hotel. As the Great Depression deepened, nothing came of these plans and on Christmas Day 1930, the Vine Street theater began showing movies at the bargain rate of 25 cents.
The Vine Street Theater on March 30, 1930 with the opening of PHILADELPHIA. The theater boasts a new marquee and illuminated vertical signs.
With a new marquee and showing ‘All The Best Talkies–and only 25 Cents’ (1932) LAPL
BACKGROUND
Early photographs, showing a dusty sparsely populated town surrounded by rich agriculture, reveal the first Hollywood settlers raised vegetables. In 1890 the population of Los Angeles was 101,454. But by 1925 the population grew to $1,500,000. With Los Angeles county expanding rapidly, the need for housing increased. With the building of a new Hall of Justice, new highways, a $35,000,000 flood control project, and an extension of harbor facilities, Los Angeles began an unprecedented building cycle and began changing from a rural to a city environment.
The Jacob Stern Estate in 1920. Vine Street (Right) Hollywood Boulevard (Top). Beautiful orchards surround the estate.
Date Palms and Orchards of The Jacob Stern Estate. (Los Angeles Public Library)
The Jacob Stern Estate seen from it’s entrance on Vine Street. (Los Angeles Public Library)
Amongst Los Angeles’ leading real estate moguls from 1900-1933, Jacob Stern greatly influenced the shaping of the Hollywood-Vine area into a shopping and entertainment district. By 1907, Stern owned 8 lots in Fullerton and over 400 acres of fine land in Santa Ana, once part of the Yorba estate, an old Mexican grant, with plans of subdividing the property into five and ten-acre tracts for small orchard farmers. The subdivided property, consisting of 1700 acres total, at the mouth of the Santa Ana canyon, sold quickly at $100 and up per acre. Following the 1909 sale of Stern’s Bolsa Chico ranch to Long Beach and Santa Ana capitalists for $30,000, these 5-acres tracts were selling for $1250 or 250.00 per acre. Now Stern turned his sights toward Hollywood after purchasing a large agricultural tract at the corner of Prospect (now Hollywood Blvd.) and Vine. Stern had little interest in his estate’s agricultural resources, thinking only of the re-sale value of the land.
With the changing of Hollywood zoning laws in October 1921, out-of-state buyers were now interested in purchasing Hollywood real estate. Eastern investors, awakening to the profits derived from investment in land and new structures, began looking westward with the purpose of erecting hostelries, changing Hollywood from a country village into a roaring town. During this period, lot sales totaling more than $12,000,000 came from out-of-state investors.
An Eastern syndicate purchased the east side of Vine between Hollywood Blvd. and Yucca for $235,000, property on Cosmo street between Hollywood Blvd. and Selma for $75,000; property on Wilcox north of Sunset for $70,000; and the Community Theater property on Ivar between Hollywood and Yucca for $38,500.
By 1925, extensive population growth required patience when traveling through the Cahuenga pass as this was now the most congested thoroughfare in Los Angeles, the artery through which all motorists coming from the north must pass through in and out of Los Angeles.
Wanting a share of the business opportunities, a number of representative black men from various parts of Southern California formed the State Negro Business Men’s League, a group of 300 men whose goal of stimulating business enterprise among black men and encouraging a greater interest in public affairs was thwarted. The restricted racial covenants of the time were successful in preventing black ownership of key property and all land ownership, eliminating all possible participation by black and other third-world entrepreneurs in Los Angeles’ community and business circles.
With the influx of illegal Mexicans growing to 350,000, worried government officials in Sacramento threatened deportation. Although hundreds of Mexicans came into California obeying the immigration laws, the nearly 200,000 entering the county illegally between 1900 and 1930, an increase of 159%, drew consternation.
The poor, unsanitary housing available to Mexicans created slum conditions that some consideration typical. At the same time, welfare organizations claimed caring for indigent Mexicans taxed their organization’s budget, forcing stricter enforcement of visa regulations, reducing the influx of Mexican immigrants by 25 percent.
Feeling passage of legislation would cause serious economic difficulties in Los Angeles resulting in a loss of low-cost Mexican Labor, Mexican and American consuls met, discussing new regulations governing Mexican entries. Mexicans, eliminated from being considered part of the fabric of Los Angeles beyond cheap labor; proper wages and housing for these workers were not part of the discussion. The solution in balancing the need for cheaper labor while, at the same time, keeping Los Angeles neighborhoods white was solved by enforcing housing restrictions, keeping the undesirables confined to certain specified sections or neighborhoods lacking in interest to white developers.
The number of highly restricted residential areas grew with the creation of a new housing tract in 1925, Hollywoodland, with residents entering through the portals of Beachwood drive and around Lake Hollywood, ensuring further racial and ethnic separation.
THE HOLLYWOOD PLAZA HOTEL
As early as 1922, Jacob Stern’s vision of an elite and wealthy Hollywood centered around the building of The Hollywood Plaza Hotel, the most luxurious hotel of its time featuring a men’s smoking room, an outside patio centered around a fountain, set amongst a dense grove of date palms. This setting was often used as a setting for making silent films calling for an exotic locale.
The Herbert M. Baruch corporation hired Architects Walker & Eisen, designers of the Taft building directly across the street, and their submitted plans were ready for approval on 28 August 1924 with the 10-story structure budgeted at $500,000 and managed by Stern’s son Eugene.
Building the Plaza hotel was a difficult task. The silty soil, the end result of water run-off from the hills, was suitable for growing crops but anchoring a foundation to it required great skill. To secure the foundation, running piles underneath the entire foundation area was a necessity and budget increased $250,000. Construction was stopped and testing of the soil initiated to find the exact bearing capacity for foundation re-design. After rushing the pile driving machinery from the Raymond Pile Company in Omaha, day and night operation completed the new foundation within 45 days.
Another negative condition faced by the contractor was that when building began, repaving Vine Street was in force making access to the building site practically impossible for trucks carrying materials. Despite problems resulting in a set-back in total completion of the project by forty-nine days, the Hollywood Hotel Plaza emerged with a building foundation superior for its time.
The Hollywood Plaza Hotel is a T-shaped structure, ten stories high, of reinforced concrete Class A design in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. One of the interesting features of the Hollywood Plaza Hotel is the fact that it is built around two enclosed plazas, surrounded by a high wall, ensuring complete privacy.
The lobby of the Hollywood Plaza Hotel on opening day 1925.
The exterior main façade is ornamental with beautifully figured artificial stone, and an arrangement of window spacing and cornice work on the 8th floor level, effectively breaking the monotony of uniform elevations.
By March 1925, six of the Hollywood Plaza’s ten stories were completed despite accidents. In one accident, a wheel barrow loaded with bricks tumbled 8 stories downward striking four workers, killing one. In another incident, a platform hoist broke loose plunging workers several stories in a free fall, injuring two.
The Plaza Hotel opened on 15 October, 1925 as the most culturally significant hotel in Hollywood, complete with musical programs, art exhibits and lectures by noted speakers. Although the hotel’s exterior was plain, visitors entering the Hollywood Plaza Hotel were greeted by an elegant interior accented by a double-height lobby, decorated by noted designer George G. Benedict in soft pastels with red and gold silk damask draperies, and thick-pile hand woven carpets over marble floors. Rather than rely on imports, the hotel purchased all furniture and appointments from local companies. Designed as a New York style hotel, the Hollywood Plaza became a popular stopping point with out-of-town theater and radio performers working in Los Angeles.
Hollywood Plaza Hotel Rooms featured Murphy Hide-Away-Beds, providing residents with a day-time living room suite.
Of the 198 Plaza guest rooms, sixty percent of the rooms contained Murphy in-a-door beds, complete with box springs, making it possible for guest enjoyment of a parlor room, free from a day-bed during the waking hours. Each room contained a separate bath and a dressing room with a built-in-dresser-vanity-wardrobe combination. Three different color schemes predominate throughout the suites: Biltmore green, Biltmore blue and French gray and all hotel air circulated through swamp coolers eliminating, advertisements said, all dust and impurities in the air.
In December 1925, shortly after its opening, The Plaza was threatened by fire after a first floor awning caught fire and shot upward consuming additional awnings in its path to a height of seven stories. Hotel damage was minimal.
The Plaza was noted for its restaurant facilities, Klemptner’s Blue Plate Café (Plaza Marine Café) opening on 15 October 1925. Guests enjoyed sitting in roomy leather and American walnut cathedral style booths and at an attractive counter with revolving stool seats. The center space contained tables seating 150 guests amid a décor of Spanish-Moorish pastel hues with a tiled mosaic theme.
Klemptner’s restaurant shared the ground floor with a spacious lobby featuring a cigar counter, beauty parlor and barber shop. The mezzanine area contained a lady’s lounge equipped with writing desks.
Because of Klemptner’s proximity to the Famous Players-Lasky motion picture studio on Vine and Selma, the restaurant became the studio annex. Anytime a player could not be located around the studio, call boys were dispatched to Klemptner’s in search of the missing player. Greta Garbo always took her meals at the same private table to the right of the entrance.
Once Famous Players-Lasky motion picture studio moved to Melrose avenue in 1926, actors and executives began eating lunches and dinners closer to their new location and the Hotel restaurant eventually closed.
The Pig ‘N’ Whistle Café chain occupied the Plaza in July 1928 under a $150,000 long-term lease. Parking for the Pig ‘N’ Whistle was available directly across the street next to the Taft Building, entering alongside a convenient dry cleaning establishment. Patrons could drop off their cleaning while shopping at B. H. Dyas department store or lunching at the Plaza then pick up their dry-cleaning on the way home.
The beautiful garden of the Hollywood Plaza Hotel ‘Russian Eagle Cafe’ in 1933.
In 1933 the restaurant space was redecorated for The Russian Eagle Café and Garden run by the former head of Russian Imperial Guard, complete a design featuring two eagles placed over the entrance, the patriotic blue NRA eagle and the Russian Imperial Eagle. Entering the café, patrons were treated to live Russian gypsy music playing out on the garden patio.
The Hollywood Plaza Hotel restaurant space was remodeled into ‘The Cinnabar” in 1936.
In 1936, The Plaza became part of the Hull hotel chain, also owners of The Hollywood Roosevelt. Thomas Hull spent an estimated $100,000 reworking the former Pig ‘N’ Whistle into a swank nightclub, the Cinnabar. With an interior designed by G. Albert Landsburgh, a world-renowned theater designer, Cinnabar featured a lavish mural, a bandstand and dance floor and a modern interior. But despite a successful opening on 17 December, 1936, the Cinnabar lasted only nine months before being replaced by the Clara Bow-Rex Bell “It Café.”
Various remodels over the years, in adjusting to changing tastes, further destroyed the character of the original hotel. A pool and new lobby were added in 1951 and the restaurant space was known as ‘The Wagon Wheel Cafe.”
Hollywood Plaza Hotel Pool from a 1958 postcard.
A 1952 remodel of The Hollywood Plaza lobby.
The Hollywood Plaza became an apartment hotel in 1972 then converted into senior affordable housing in 2004 and, after years of alterations, is unrecognizable from the once elegant hotel of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The pool was bricked over and replaced by a gazebo and parking lot. Some of the original date palms still exist; others removed when a 5 story parking structure was erected next door in 2010.
Looking north from Hollywood and Vine, 1907. A. G. Bartlett estate is on the left.
Like most cities of Spanish origin, Los Angeles had its first growth about its downtown plaza. Hollywood’s real estate development began during the American Civil War, when Jose Valdez acquired 1000 acres of the Spanish grant of Antonio Rocha, until American settlers dispossessed Valdez and Tomas Urquidez on legal technicalities.
In 1888, Horace Wilcox began laying out the town on his 640 acres, and Senator Cornelius Cole began subdividing Colegrove, now the southern part of Hollywood, but lots sold poorly and the town grew slowly.
There were only 500 people in this shepherds’ village, which was incorporated in 1903 and annexed in 1910. The best peas in Hollywood were growing on the Famous Players-Lasky lot at Vine between Selma and Sunset before the movies took possession of the tract in 1913.
With Eastern expansion gradually moving westward, Hollywood became one of the outstanding examples of an influence that changed city growth: city planning.
The decentralization of the downtown business district, due to excessive automobile congestion, and its subsequent re-location to outlying underdeveloped land such as Hollywood was the city’s first gentrification attempt. By systematically moving “undesirables” to outlying communities Hollywood’s select real estate remained accessible only to the white wealthy. By 1925, Hollywood shops rivaled the best in downtown Los Angeles. In 1925, the average value of property on Hollywood between Wilcox and Argyle was $4000 a front foot with a predicted increase to $10,000 a front foot by 1935.
The 100 x 150 feet lot on the southwest corner of Hollywood and Vine sold in 1922 for $100,000 and, by 1925, its value increased to $400,000. The land, which in many locations, is desert and thought unfit for agricultural production, became fertile with proper cultivation and irrigation.
Closely identified with the development of Hollywood is Alfred Z. Taft owner of a prominent Hollywood real estate syndicate, the Taft Realty Company of Hollywood. By 1920, several large Taft subdivided several tracts, among them Taft’s West Hollywood Vista tract, located in the most exclusive residential section of West Hollywood.
Taft’s extensive ownership of commercial and agricultural real estate in Hollywood and his Hollywood improvement plan also created these “restricted” and “exclusive” neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles in keeping with the conventional wisdom of the period.
The Taxpayer’s Protective Association set up racial covenants in 1911. The first recorded racial covenant since Hollywood became a city was in 1909.
Establishing a record price for Hollywood Boulevard frontage, the Taft realty company purchased the southeast corner of Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard on 24 April 1921, the site of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for more than $125,000. Of the 120 feet frontage, forty feet was available for immediate sale, with the remaining 80 feet held as a site for a proposed store and office building.
Large Eastern oil companies such as the Barnsdall Corporation begun buying land and subdividing into exclusive residential and business districts such as Olive Hill, a community boarded by Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood Blvd., Vermont Avenue and Edgemont Street. Each district was to have an exclusive shopping district, with homes and a theater seating 500-600, offered to the Hollywood Theater Association. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright supervised all architectural work, including designing of the buildings and landscaping.
The Five-Finger Plan extended Cole and Wilcox below Hollywood Boulevard and widened Cahuenga Boulevard.
Property owners in an 1800-acre area in the Hollywood foothills threw their support behind the Five-Finger Plan, a proposed $3,700,000 boulevard widening system for Hollywood. “The Five-Finger Plan” was one of the first major street plans approved by Los Angeles voters. The first phase of the plan widened Cahuenga Boulevard from 50 to 94 feet. Paving and widening of Selma Avenue in Hollywood from Highland to Gower began in September 1925, costing $500,000 according to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The “Five-Finger Plan” included linking Hollywood with the San Fernando Valley.
Along with street widening and paving, building construction increased. Projects included the one-million-dollar Warner Brothers Theater at the corner of Hollywood and Wilcox, a new post-office on the west side of Vine Street above Hollywood, The Rooftop Ballroom at Selma and Vine, costing $150,000, The Plaza Hotel on the Southwest corner of Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard and the Marion Building on Selma and Vine built for Frank Marion.
By condemning land and then seizing it, the city gained land necessary for road expansion. The city defends the practice, now known as ‘eminent domain,’ as necessary for the betterment of the city, and “reasonable” compensation paid as fair and just. Donating the land was an option few enjoy, then and now.
Although condemnation made possible road widening, power line installation and installation of water or sewer lines on, over or beneath land adjacent to existing government improvements, the practice is controversial when used for projects with questionable public value.
Accompanied by the growing financial solidarity of the motion picture industry, Hollywood’s grew rapidly. By 1925, attendance at movie theaters averaged 70 million attendees weekly and audiences expected the movie folk to live opulent lifestyles.
Hollywood area development, overseen by the Vine Street Development Association, provided for a systematic development of the district with plans calling for the establishment of the Vine Street area as a great shopping and theatrical center. Nineteen twenties women preferred shopping in Hollywood to driving downtown unable to find parking. Intersections of important highways always form a nucleus for potential business districts, where land values soar.
By June 1930, the Hollywood-Vine area saw seven limit-height structures, The Bank of Hollywood, Guaranty, Taft, Dyas, Plaza, Knickerbocker Hotel and Mountain States Life Building, built since 1924, establishing a record for communities located outside of downtown metropolitan areas. By the fall of 1929, Hollywood had sixteen motion picture and four legitimate theaters. More than $50 million dollars was set aside for building construction and another $8 million for street improvements in the next two years.
Eliminating the Vine street hill upwards from Yucca prepared for the building of a $5,000,000 Ritz-Carlton Hotel. This 250 room, 100 bungalows, Ritz-Carlton, set to rise in the Hollywood Hills would be the first in the chain in California and the crowning glory of the chain. The 22-acre hilltop site, with magnificent views overlooking the mountains and the sea and lying between Beachwood drive and Vine Street had a built in wealthy clientele beneficial to the Los Angeles area by an increase in property values. A drafting office erected on the site in March 1930, expected that more than investors would spend $100,000,000 building hotels and apartments adjoining the Ritz Carleton site prior to the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
On April 18, 1930, the Ritz-Carleton Corporation approved architect Gordon B. Kaufman’s Spanish-style plans with the caveat the hotel must be ready for opening no later 31 March 1931. Within five years, frontage on Hollywood Blvd. could possibly reach $20,000 per front feet. Hollywood Business Properties, owners of a mile of Hollywood Blvd. Frontage paid a 200 percent cash dividend to stockholders of record on April 1, 1930, remarkable during a period of the Great Depression. Following the announced of the building of a new Ritz-Carlton hotel, there was an immediate increase in one-way tickets to Los Angeles from the East, indicating an incoming permanent influx of new residents.
However, building on the Ritz-Carlton could not occur without a zoning change from single-family residences to commercial. Building Authorization, granted on 16 June 1930, followed a dinner held under a canvas top for 200 prominent business and civic leaders. Twenty huge multi-colored searchlights punctuated by the Goodyear blimp filled the sky with what witnesses described as “one of the greatest single electrical displays in history.”
The feature of the program was a fifteen-minute address delivered by George McAneny, President of the Ritz-Carlton chain, speaking over the telephone from his New York office, broadcast through large speakers. At the end of the speech, McAneny exchanged greetings with Gilbert Beesemyer, president of the Hollywood Ritz-Carlton, and Harry Chandler and S. H. Woodruff, directors.
In 1925, Gilbert Henry Beesemyer was president of Central Bank of Hollywood as well as secretary and general manager of Guaranty Building and Loan Association. By 1929, Beesemyer along with B. H. Dyas, Sid Grauman, Carl Laemmle, Joseph M. Schenck and Sol Lesser were part of a network of leading Hollywood Directors.
However, on 12 Dec 1930, at a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Hollywood, Beesemyer admitted embezzling funds amounting to more than $8,000,000 from their ally, The Guaranty Building and Loan Association of Hollywood, leaving a trail of want and suicide among the 25,000 stockholders worldwide caught in the firm’s collapse.
Plans for a Ritz-Carlton in Hollywood disappeared immediately without explanation.
Three days later the Bank of Hollywood closed its doors and Beesemyer admitting falsifying records of the North American Bond & Mortgage Co. and the Guaranty Holding Corporation and putting more than $2,000,000 into the Elmer Oil Company of Santa Fe Springs. After drilling eleven dry wells, the company failed. Beesemyer also suffered losses of about $600,000 in the stock market and $400,000 from personal loans.
Bessemeyer (listed as Besseymeyer in his San Quentin record, served 9 years for embezzling $8 million dollars.
Convicted on 10 counts of grand theft on 31 January 1931, the court sentenced Bessemyer to from 10 to 40 years in San Quentin. After serving 9 years, twice as long as any man ever served in California for a similar offense, Beesemyer gained parole in January 1940 due to existing laws and against public outcry. Beesemyer left prison with permission to leave the state for a job in Chicago. In 1942, Bessemyer was living in Baltimore, Md. and working for the Livingston Chemical Company. He eventually returned to Ventura County, California where he died on 22 Feb 1982 at the age of 97. At that time of his release from prison, investors suspected Bessemyer had more than $1,000,000 in hidden assets.
By 1934, traffic jams in the Hollywood/Vine area were commonplace.
By 1931, widening of Hollywood Boulevard, Vine Street, Ivar Avenue, Cahuenga Blvd. and Cole from 70 to 100 feet was complete. Ivar between Hollywood Blvd. and Selma Street, Ivar created below Hollywood Blvd. by the “Five-finger Plan,” was to be a bond house area with negotiations with bond houses; buildings constructed to suit. Vine Street was to be the main artery south to Wilshire Boulevard, while Cahuenga would carry heavy traffic going north into the valley. However, Hollywood’s population growth far exceeded what it could handle. Hollywood and Vine was, by 1934, one of the most heavily traveled areas in Los Angeles. City planners turned their attention to Wilshire Boulevard as the most desirable location for high end shopping. I Magnin moved its flagship store from the corner of Hollywood and Vine to an elegant Wilshire Boulevard location.
Once Wilshire Boulevard was extended through MacArthur Park in 1934, Wilshire Boulevard became the fashionable shopping district.
The completed passthrough of Wilshire Boulevard through MacArthur Park.
Not all of this expansion went unnoticed by residents. In February 1933, residential property owners in the Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Piedmont Place and Wilshire Crest districts organized a new civic development association known as the Wilshire Home Owners Association, with an avowed program of saving Wilshire Boulevard from becoming a “pig-stand sandwich alley.” Their pledge was in maintaining the high class residential character of the area located between Western and LaBrea avenues, vowing to prevent this section from being zoned for Business use. Once Wilshire Boulevard was opened through MacArthur Park in 1934, Wilshire became a major link to downtown as well as an exclusive shopping district. Widening Wilshire to more than 70 feet with parking available on both sides of the street gave rise to rapid expansion of luxury shopping areas.
Road widening at Sunset and Vine, 1930.
On January 31, 1931, William M. Davey, a heavy investor in Hollywood properties, purchased the newly opened Bank of Hollywood building for $1,500,000, moving his office into one of the buildings 321 offices, giving it the largest office capacity of any building in the area. Many downtown financial houses moved into the building creating 100% occupancy showing office space in the area is in strong demand.
Notwithstanding the depressions that intervened from 1880 to 1932, the value of Los Angeles real estate doubled in each of the five decades, making investors rich. Others were not so lucky.
Gentrification, revived in the Vine Street area with the building of The Camden Apartments, a RIT, at 1590 Vine at Selma, with rents starting at $2,205 for a studio unit up to a $4,070 monthly starting rental for a two bedroom-two bath unit, continues a path of neighborhood displacement of lower income families, seniors and small business owners. There are no affordable housing units available in this new luxury apartment building. Residents in the Vine Street area find themselves not only in a neighborhood they no longer recognize but also one in which they cannot afford active participation.
Vine at Sunset, 1925. Famous Players-Lasky Motion Picture Studio is on the left.
Photo Credit: California Historical Society (USC)
Sunset Boulevard in September 1931 after street widening. Photo Credit: California Historical Society (USC)