Looking east along Hollywood Boulevard at the Highland Ave corner, Hollywood, circa 1952

Posted on October 25, 2020 by

Looking east along Hollywood Boulevard at the Highland Ave corner, Hollywood, circa 1952Yesterday’s photo of three unchanged buildings on Sunset Blvd contrast with these ones along Hollywood Blvd circa 1952. The Bank of America building on the southeast corner of Highland Ave is now a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not attraction and has a huge, green dinosaur on top of it. The Coffee Dan’s (a popular chain of coffee shops) is now a McDonald’s. The Hollywood Theatre is now a Guinness World Records Museum. And the Drake Hotel is now a Church of Scientology building. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the 1952 version. Can someone please put it all back the way it was?

This is how that corner looked in April 2019. (I wasn’t kidding about the green dinosaur but it must have been Easter because they even added bunny ears to him.)

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3 responses to “Looking east along Hollywood Boulevard at the Highland Ave corner, Hollywood, circa 1952”

  1. J Michael Niotta, PhD says:
    October 25, 2020 at 8:25 am

    She was the Hotel Christie prior to the Drake and the basement contained a club managed my great grandfather and Johnny Roselli—the Club New Yorker.

    Reply
    • Martin Turnbull says:
      October 25, 2020 at 12:37 pm

      Hey Michael, thanks for stopping by. So your great-grandfather managed Club New Yorker? Whoa! I’m impressed. I don’t suppose there are any family photos laying around showing what the interior looked like…?

      Reply
      • J Michael Niotta, PhD says:
        October 25, 2020 at 12:44 pm

        Of the New Yorker, no. Only testimony from the Kefauver Hearings to confirm he and Roselli managed the spot with Bonnie Hyman. He owned and or managed a number of establishments in Los Angeles and San Diego. I have been working on his biography for quite some time. My third book is out late March and hope to get the Jack Dragna bio out next year. We shall see.

        Reply

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