Gentle reader,
One of the greatest advertising signs ever installed is the giant neon portrait of Earl Carroll’s Vanities showgirl Beryl Wallace, which for a brief and glorious season glowed on her beau’s namesake venue on Sunset Boulevard, beneath the incantation “Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world.”
Thanks to advocacy by preservationists, including many on this list (thanks!), the City has pressed developer Essex to make good on its agreement to restore that lost Hollywood sign as a condition of receiving permits for a massive apartment complex next door.
The rough outline is in place and neon tube installation should begin soon.
This is all happening while the landmarked building is on the market seeking its next steward.
Recently, we visited the Earl Carroll, to meet neon craftsman and historian Paul Greenstein and to hear about how he’ll put Miss Wallace back on the building.
Paul also gave us a tour of the theater, with its fascinating layers of obsolete and recent theatrical use, including the modern stage Nickelodeon constructed on top of the 70’ revolving one that gave 20th Century audiences double the show.
From inside the auditorium, it was tough to understand how this mechanism worked, but once we went under the stage, all was revealed.
We wanted to share the “girl lift” capsule that delivered showgirls like Miss Wallace to their on stage mark, as well as Paul’s pitch for the City to buy this remarkable place and turn it into a showplace for Los Angeles creativity.
The city isn’t in the business of venue operation, but perhaps it could partner with an impresario who sees the possibilities that Paul sees, even before his replica of the spectacular vintage signage is switched on. If you know deep pocketed show folks looking for a new project, please pass it on!
The past week and change has been packed with pain and drama around efforts to preserve Hollywood Center Motel, a property left unsecured to suffer the assaults of fire, LAFD backhoes and midnight neon sign snatchers—even as its second Cultural Heritage Commission hearing draws near.
We have a lot to share about the civic shenanigans the landmarking effort has revealed—but this can wait until the closer to the next hearing date, when we’ll encourage you to make public comment in person or in writing, while providing more context that you’ll find in the New York Times.
Instead, we’re celebrating the enlightened stewardship of all the creative operators who made magic inside the house that Earl Carroll and Beryl Wallace built, while ensuring the unique mechanical features were encapsulated safely beneath modern infrastructure, where they might one day be revived.
Those two lovers didn’t retire, sell the venue and reinvent themselves: they died simultaneously, at the height of their fame, in an airplane crash. We suspect their benevolent energies haunt the house, providing a gentle sort of protection that holds it together, surviving these challenging times in which creative and residential real estate is hoarded by speculators, unavailable to the artists and promoters who once made history and shaped culture in Hollywood.
This town isn’t like other places, and we think it’s worth fighting for. So we’re sending this one out with love, for our dear Hollywood, the Earl Carroll and especially the Hollywood Center Motel. May they rise once again and blow all of our minds.
Saturday’s Know Your Downtown Los Angeles tour is sold out, sorry. But we do have room for you to explore Evergreen Cemetery on 1/24 and the National Register districts of Alvarado Terrace & So. Bonnie Brae on 1/31. And just added to our calendar, the very popular Franklin Village Old Hollywood on 3/14. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles’ past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city’s soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (1/17 - sorry, sold out) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (1/24) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (1/31) • Hollywood Noir (2/7) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (2/14) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (2/21) • Weird West Adams & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (2/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (3/7) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (3/14) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
New subreddit just launched, inspired by community efforts to protect Hollywood Center Motel from demolition by neglect. Please join /r/LosAngelesBlight to advocate for endangered buildings in your neighborhood, and help fellow Angelenos do the same.
Incredible (if poorly lit) oil painting at Mission San Fernando of the Virgin Mary trampling the seven-headed beast from Revelation 17:9. We love the symbolism of goodness in triumph over corrupt empires. The beast is kinda cute, though.
It took Bob Hope’s wife Dolores 62 years to talk him into converting to Catholicism, and in return he got this grave for the ages, at Mission San Fernando.
The day we met Peter, during a Black Dahlia tour, he was in an Amazon delivery box at the Hotel Cecil, with a note asking for help. The wonderful Luxe Paws crew rescued and fostered him. Now this Skid Row survivor needs a forever home—maybe with you?
A perfect 1970s clip art time capsule sign left to honor Rudy Marencik, who ran his namesake Northridge barber shop from around 1976 until his death in 2006. At Parthenia and Corbin, in the same mini-mall at Brent’s Deli and Mr. Stuff. ‘Aircut, guv’nor?
Farewell to Grand Central Market’s legendary Roast to Go, which quietly shuttered last month; owner Sunny was ready to retire. Jonathan Gold said he’d be there with a machete to protect this spot, named for the baked chickens that were a favorite of busy 1950s families.
New independent media outlet The LA Local, launched in response to how legacy media is failing Angelenos, expands on the Boyle Heights Beat channel with coverage of Inglewood, South LA, Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake.
RIP to California State Librarian, bibliophile and historian of architectural terra cotta Gary Francis Kurutz. What a career for this native son of La Cañada!
Half way into 43 pages of Los Angeles City Council motions, we did not expect to find the City getting into the niche business of guided motion picture location tours. Cultural tourism is cool, but please hire cinema historians and do not just use AI to steal their work!
So there we were, leading a tour group through the redevelopment ruins of Main Street, lamenting all the quirky/sleazy small business run off by City Hall prudes, when we came upon @isiahdoesthis at @shopandprop. So great to see vacant Downtown storefronts come alive again!
Another DOA, purely performative L.A. City Council motion: where is the private right of action clause from the City Attorney to hold illegal Airbnb operators accountable if the City will not? Nowhere! Psych!
On January 12, lender LCP foreclosed on Relevant Group’s Dream Hotel. The failing hotelier seems to have made some dirty money over the holidays by slapping illegal Don Julio billboards all over the building—the brand in whose box Jose Huizar received cash from Chinese developers. This has been “under investigation” since 12/18, but the property changed hands and it’s still up. Will the city compel this billboard blight be removed? Also, PLUM never heard the two CEQA appeals on this property, and the action has now expired with no action—which doesn’t seem legal.
Moving good early 20th century houses to Altadena instead of sending them to the landfill is good public policy, and we’re happy to see this happening... especially when they pass the oldest continuously operating residency hotel in Los Angeles and its neon!
Tune in to Kate de Los Santos’ podcast The Bombshell Effect about Cole’s French Dip as its long threatened, oft extended closing date comes into view. Our Kim Cooper agrees a place this packed with early L.A. ghosts should not be allowed to die.
Did Raymond Chandler’s house in Pacific Palisades survive the Palisades Fire? Almost nothing in this neighborhood did. Paying our respects with a big lump in the throat. The alphabet streets were a beautiful part of Los Angeles.
ICYMI: we attempted to livestream the 12/4 Cultural Heritage Commission hearing about the Hollywood Center Motel, plus our Richard Schave’s public comment about French Hospital, an 1860s landmark with modern additions, now being demolished with no review.
A thoughtful piece on the likely sale of the quasi-public Stahl House at a billionaire’s price, and the lack of institutions prepared to keep L.A.’s best modernist houses open to all. LACMA’s board should have funded an architectural endowment long ago.
We recently spotted something really cool hiding in plain sight on the north side of the long empty Hotel Clark at 4th & Hill Streets. Friends, we give you: Sherman’s Ghost!
Sunrise Liquor on Saticoy in North Hollywood, still sporting the original signs by Electrical Advertising (1962). That LIQUOR stack is like building blocks for an alcoholic toddler.
We saw a post on Instagram from @palisades_embers about a “remodel” (stealth demolition) happening on the residential property next to where their family has relocated, and encouraged them to document it with video. Preservationists have been screaming about this developer friendly loophole for years. It is not a remodel when everything is crushed and thrown in the landfill, and only a corrupt City Hall would seek to gaslight citizens that we don’t know demolition when we see one. Now with fire victims struggling to get permits, it is all too clear that only investors get concierge treatment from LADBS and City Planning. 2026 is the year it can end. And maybe if it didn’t “pencil out” to “remodel” the house next door to @palisades_embers into a pile of splinters, a family could be living there right now!
