The Latest – West Hollywood History Center

The Last Train Through West Hollywood

P.J’s was a famous rock club on Santa Monica Blvd. at Crescent Heights in West Hollywood. Traktur restaurant and other companies occupy that northwest corner now.

The Paris Theatre is next door. You can read more about it here.

From the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 12, 1970:

Two Halloweens ago, bartender Al Solliday strapped on two six-shooters and staged a mock holdup of a Southern Pacific freight train.
Sheriff’s deputies, however, didn’t laugh.

This wasn’t an ordinary freight train.

… Read the rest

Mock-up for Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 © Ed Ruscha

The Getty Has Curated Ed Ruscha’s Archive of Photos of the Sunset Strip and Hollywood in ’12 Sunsets’

Jon Ponder

In 1966, decades before Google Street View, Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha mounted a motorized camera in the payload of a truck and set out to photograph every building on the Sunset Strip. He published the assemblage of photos in a groundbreaking book, Every Building on the Sunset Strip that signaled a new approach to art and photography.

Now the Getty Museum has compiled an archive of 65,000 of Ruscha’s photos of the boulevard, taken over the course of 50 years.… Read the rest

City Website Offers Historic Walking Tours

Editors

The City of West Hollywood’s Historic Preservation Division has published three local history-related walking tours on its website at wehopreservation.org:

Leland Bryant Walking Tour

Architect Leland Bryant designed many of the luxury apartment buildings in West Hollwyood. Leland Bryant Walking Tour.

Old Sherman Walking Tour

This self-guided walking tour explores West Hollywood’s most historic and culturally significant landmarks. The Old Sherman neighborhood is a collection of sites that harken back to the earliest days of the city’s history.
Old Sherman Walking Tour

Harper Avenue Walking Tour

Introduction: “This tour is designed to introduce the rich historical and cultural fabric of its Harper Avenue Historic District.”… Read the rest

Take a Trip along Sunset Boulevard’s Musical History

Jon Ponder

Sunset Boulevard’s long relationship with the music industry is spotlighted in this illustrated tour published by the Los Angeles Times.

The tour encompasses the full length of Sunset, from Downtown to the Beach, but also focuses on the central role played by venues on the Sunset Strip, including the Roxy and the Whisky as well as the late great Tower Records.

The Viper Room is not included, nor are venues on the Strip from the past like Gazzarri’s, The Trip and Pandora’s Box.… Read the rest

Video: 1965 Film Offers Rare Look at the Dodge Mansion in West Hollywood

Editors

Designed in 1914 and constructed in 1916, the Walter L. Dodge House blended Modern and Spanish Mission styles and was considered one of West Hollywood’s first architecturally significant residences. Located at 950 North Kings Road, the estate occupied the full width of the block to Sweetzer Avenue. It was the retirement home of Walter Dodge, the millionaire inventor of a foot treatment called Tiz. He sold it in 1924 to T. Morrison McKenna who owned it until 1939 when the Los Angeles Board of Education unilaterally condemned it, forcing McKenna to sell it.… Read the rest

Bruz Fletcher sings ‘Spring in Manhattan’

Jon Ponder

Not all the artists in the Pansy Craze performed in drag. Bruz Fletcher, who was from a prominent Indiana family that was said to have been the model for Booth Tarkington’s novel, The Magnificent Ambersons, played piano and sang original compositions, interspersed with biting commentary laced with double entendres and coded references to gay life — later this style would be called “camp.”

In 1935, he performed a Cafe LaMaze, at 9309 Sunset at North Wetherly Drive (later the site both of Sherry’s Nightclub and the rock club Gazzarri’s).… Read the rest