The Garden of Allah Hotel on Sunset Blvd at the gateway to the Sunset Strip was open from 1927 to 1959. During those years, it underwent a succession of management teams. At some point in the 1950s, one of those managers decided it was time for a new sign on the southwest corner of Sunset and Havenhurst Dr. I love the exotic, vaguely Arabian lettering they chose. And that sign advertising “APARTMENTS – BACHELORS – VILLAS.” Can anyone tell me in this context what a “bachelor” was? Is it what we now call a studio? In the background, we can see part of a sign advertising Manny Lopez, who billed himself as the “King of the Cha Cha Cha.” He had a gig at the Garden of Allah in the late 1950s, so I’m guessing this photo was taken toward the end of the hotel’s 32-year run.
This is how that corner looked in May 2016, which is, oddly, the most recent image provided by Google Maps Streetview. At any rate, it looks nothing like that anymore because earlier in 2022, the entire site was demolished in order to make way for the 8150Sunset project, a Frank Gehry designed mixed-use project.
In 2013, I visited the restored scale model of the Garden of Allah Hotel. This is what that corner looks like in the model, which was a copy of how the hotel looked in the late 1950s prior to it being razed in August 1959. If you’d like to see more photos of the model, you can check out my blog post: http://bit.ly/goamodel
By the way, I have a series of 9 novels set in and around the hotel. Known collectively as the Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels, you can find more information here.
You are correct, a “bachelor” is typically the same setup as a studio.
One room with a bathroom.
Thanks, Bob.
A bachelor is a two-room apartment; one room is the bathroom, the other is everything else–maybe like Gene Kelley’s in ‘An American in Paris,’ except that the bathroom is now private, ‘en suite,’ as they say.
Thanks, Skip.
Doesn’t Dana Andrews’ character have one in “My Foolish Heart”? Then the de-fun-ition would be a place with room for a hot plate where you can seal your fate.???
So is this the corner where the three main characters say their farewells at the end of the ninth and final novel in the series? If so, it’s nice to be able to picture where that would have occurred – had they not been fictional, that is.
Well…technically they said goodbye around the corner to the left close to where that Manny Lopez sign is, but close enough.
My family and I actually stayed at the Garden of Allah one summer in 1959. We stayed in an upstairs apartment with Burl Ives and his son beneath us, there was a bullet hole in our living room which apparently never was smoothed over, and my mother shielded my young eyes when we came back from dinner one night and there was a lot of skinny dipping and cavorting in the swimming pool! LOL.