The vacant property on Sunset Boulevard had a reputation as a sleazy, dilapidated inn, but the Hollywood Center Motel actually had multiple previous lives.<\/p>\n
The building, one of the oldest in the neighborhood, was from a time before urbanization. It was also nominated for historic protection<\/a>, in part because of its first era as a house.<\/p>\n A symbol of early Hollywood<\/p>\n Before the fire, the Hollywood Center Motel had seven buildings, a kidney-shaped pool, and a mid-century modern breeze block wall with a neon sign.<\/p>\n Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n But the motel property actually started out as a three-story, Shingle-style home built in 1905, which is an American take<\/a> on Victorian design known for broad gables.<\/p>\n That was built when Hollywood was an independent city, before it joined the city of L.A. Brian Curran, who co-chairs Hollywood Heritage<\/a>\u2019s preservation committee, says that during this period, Hollywood was known as a place for retirees to settle down.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200a[It was] marketed as a dry town,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it was like, come in, retire among the orange groves and just enjoy life in sunny California.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hollywood Center Motel in 1985.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Ed Ruscha<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n Courtesy Hollywood Heritage<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Hollywood was also changing from agricultural to real estate haven. If you were very well off, you\u2019d live in a lavish Hollywood Hills estate, like Wattles Mansion. If you were more moderate, you\u2019d live in the flat areas to the south, in upper-middle class homes just like the Shingle home.<\/p>\n Changing with the times<\/p>\n The home was first owned by William and Sarah Avery, according to Hollywood Heritage\u2019s nomination petition<\/a>, who called the home \u201cEl Nido\u201d (the nest). They didn\u2019t live there long, but the couple\u2019s luncheon made it into the local paper.<\/p>\n The home changed hands multiple times. When Edmund Schultz, a retired drugstore owner, and his family bought the property in 1921, they decided to turn it into an old English bungalow court with over a dozen units around the main home. This was part of a shift in Hollywood to create low-scale apartments as people flocked to Southern California, according to city records<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt physically evolved with the evolution of Hollywood,\u201d Curran said, \u201cbut also tells a story about the economic and cultural evolution of Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n The motel conversion didn\u2019t happen until the mid-1950s, when a different owner enclosed the front porch and divided rooms. It was put up for auction as a 23-unit motel, with a full apartment and family-style spaces.<\/p>\n The Hollywood Center Motel opened shortly after in 1956. As TV\u2019s popularity grew, it quickly became a backdrop for crime dramas. It\u2019s been a filming location for Perry Mason, The Rockford Files, T.J. Hooker and L.A. Confidential. As the decades passed, its run-down appearance worked even better for those who wanted a seedy setting.<\/p>\n A still of the motel in the TV cop drama “T.J. Hooker.” The episode, titled “Sweet Sixteen…and Dead,” aired in February 1983.<\/p>\n The damaged neon sign in 2024.<\/p>\n The music industry also got a piece of it. In the 70s, musician Neil Young stayed there because he wanted to sleep in the \u201csleaziest motel<\/a>\u201d on Sunset Boulevard.<\/p>\n This was the Hollywood Center Motel\u2019s life for decades \u2014 a little bit of stardom while it slowly deteriorated. In 2015, the breeze block was damaged in a car crash and not repaired, according to the nomination petition<\/a>. The motel stopped operating three years later.<\/p>\n What the fire means for historic status<\/p>\n Only a handful of buildings in Hollywood have this kind of history, which is why Curran says they began fighting for it to be protected once it became vacant last year.<\/p>\n The site was eligible<\/a> for local and state historic status. The city of L.A.\u2019s Cultural Heritage Commission had just voted a few weeks ago to consider that.<\/p>\n But they couldn\u2019t stay ahead of issues. The home was vandalized. A small blaze broke out on the second floor in September. Another fire damaged one of the bungalows the following month.<\/p>\n The home was demolished in the process of stopping the flames.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Courtesy Hollywood Heritage<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n Curran says losing the home in this last fire\u2014 the most significant element of the complex \u2014 makes the nomination process more challenging, but they\u2019re still pushing for it. He wants protections for the neon sign and breeze block wall. Moving forward, Curran says Hollywood Heritage<\/a> \u200awill be talking with policymakers about preventing other important sites from the same fate.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aWe know from experience that when you don\u2019t use a building, when there aren\u2019t people inside, they are vulnerable and then they burn,\u201d Curran said. \u201c\u200aWe need to do something because this continues to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The history of the Hollywood Center Hotel destroyed this week Cato Hernandez talks with host Josie Huang on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":506239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,226718,226716,2961,224,5337,226717],"class_list":{"0":"post-506238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-historic-places","11":"tag-hollywood-center-motel","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-motel-fire"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115871082329536813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768052292_750_.jpeg\")
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