In this photo of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre taken from the roof of the nearby Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel during the late-summer 1961 seven-week run of “The Young Doctors,” two things stood out to me. All that parking! There’s a lot to the immediate west and east of Grauman’s, as well as that huge lot in the upper right corner. It belonged to the First Federal Bank building, which replaced the oft-lamented Hollywood Hotel, which had fallen to the wrecking ball in 1956. Also catching my eye is the line of stars in the sidewalk. That dedication ceremony for that project took place on November 23, 1960, so those stars we can see aren’t even a year old.
This photo from 1963 during the run of “Irma La Douce” show that there was also parking behind the theater.
Here’s that same block from a different angle showing us how big the bank’s parking lot was.
My thanks to Kurt Wahlner from the highly informative GraumansChinese.org for his help with this post.
Note the sprawling parking. There are pictures of Houston, Tx from this era where much of the downtown is similarly leveled, looking as if it were bombed in the War, but no, like this part of Hollywood, they did it to themselves, making more parking so more suburbanites would come to visit, even though eventually in most other places, the entire reason to come vanished with the buildings that made it so easy to park once you got there. Still, Hollywood is only now recovering from the stupid decisions of that era.
That’s a very good point, Paul – tearing down the things people came to see doesn’t make for good long-term thinking.
What used to be in (looks like an entire block) that space? I guess this is way before the multi-level parking garage was thought of. At least the high rise parking buildings filled up those ugly spaces.