Laemmle Building ( ) was a historic building located at 6301 W.

Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollyw ...

, on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, in

Hollywood, California Hollywood, sometimes informally called Tinseltown, is a List of districts and neighborhoods in Los Angeles, neighborhood and district in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles County, California, within the city of Los Angeles. ...

. Built in 1932, it was destroyed in a fire in 2008.

History

In 1925,

Carl Laemmle Carl Laemmle (; born Karl Lämmle ; January 17, 1867 – September 24, 1939) was a German-American film producer and the co-founder and, until 1934, owner of Universal Pictures. He produced or worked on over 400 films. Regarded as one of the ...

purchased land on the northwest corner of Hollywood and Vine from George Hoover for $350,000 . Laemmle, then president of Universal Pictures Corporation, owned a successful

movie studio A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company that makes films. Today, studios are mostly financing and distribution entities. In addition, they may have their own studio facility or facilities; howe ...

in the

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County, California. Situated to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it comprises a large portion of Los Angeles, the Municipal corpo ...

and planned to build a 900-seat theatre and office tower on this property, but the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

thwarted his plan. Instead, he developed Laemmle Building, designed by

Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( ; 8 April 1892 – 16 April 1970) was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for most of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. His most ...

and opened in 1932. Laemmle Building's first tenant was the CoCo Tree Café, and in 1940 restaurateur Sidney Hoedemaker of the Pig 'n Whistle - Melody Lane chain transformed the building into a Melody Lane Restaurant. Architects Wayne McAllister and S. Charles Lee led the transformation. In 1949, Hoedemaker founded Hody's Restaurant and in 1955, Hody's Restaurant signed a twenty-year lease for Laemmle Building, at which point the building was remodeled again. In 1971, a Howard Johnson's Coffee Shop moved into the building, where they would remain until the mid-1980s, and in 1984, the

Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District The Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District is a historic district that consists of twelve blocks between the 6200 and 7000 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. This strip of commercial and retail busines ...

was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

, with Laemmle Building listed in the district. The listing noted that the building was heavily remodeled and remained no integrity; therefore, it was not listed as a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic dist ...

in the district. After Howard Johnson's Coffee Shop vacated the building, the building was occupied by a slew of struggling retail and nightclubs, including Premiere, Jack's Sugar Shack, the Deep, and finally the Basque nightclub. Also during this time, Hollywood Brown Derby briefly occupied the building, after their previous location, a half-block away, was destroyed in a fire. In 2008, the building, occupied by the Basque nightclub, was destroyed in a fire. The location has since become a parking lot.

Architecture and design

Laemmle Building was a one-story

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

structure and featured a red tile roof.

References

{{HBCED, state=collapsed 1930s architecture in the United States Hollywood Boulevard