From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

www.preservationonline.org

When it comes to historic preservation, Los Angeles has a reputation as one of the worst cities in the country. In 2003, when the Los Angeles Conservancy presented its inaugural "Los Angeles County Preservation Report Card," it found that of the 89 cities and jurisdictions in Los Angeles County, 44 earned an F in their treatment of historic landmarks.

Many great Los Angeles landmarks—like the apartments immortalized in Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," the Ambassador Hotel, and a roadside icon called the Brown Derby—now exist only as faded postcards, victims of a churn-and-burn, pro-development mentality that, in part, has come to define the city.

One particular example of this used to sit at the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevards in West Hollywood: The Garden of Allah. The complex of 25 villas built around a main house and pool may be the most famous apartment complex in city history. Actress Alla Nazimova built her mansion here in 1919 and then in 1927 added the villa-style bungalows, which catered to many movie stars, literary giants, and cultural icons like Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Dorothy Parker, Humphrey Bogart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. This was where the Algonquin Roundtable writers migrated to from New York City. Where Tallulah Bankhead famously swam naked in the swimming pool, and where it's said that Marilyn Monroe was discovered while sipping a Coke next to that same pool.

In 1959, the Garden of Allah was unceremoniously torn down, after one final fête for about 1,000 people (at an auction for the scraps of remaining furniture, bidders nearly caused a riot over Errol Flynn's bed). While today there would most likely be a movement to save it, in 1959 the complex had simply worn out its welcome. If it still stood, imagine the intrigue (and commercial potential) of making available the "Marilyn Monroe Villa" or the "Humphrey Bogart Cottage."

It was replaced by a typical mini-mall complex, and its destruction is said to have inspired Joni Mitchell's lyric "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" in her 1970 song, "Big Yellow Taxi." For years, the bank at the site featured a scale model of The Garden of Allah complex, which sat under a glass dome. Today, even that model has been removed, leaving no trace of the exotic Garden of Allah.

Bobby

The demolition of the Ambassador Hotel began in late 2005, after a long battle between the Los Angeles Unified School District, who wanted to clear the site and build a school; Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, who, through his lawyer, wanted to conduct more testing in the pantry where Kennedy was shot; and preservation groups like the L.A. Conservancy and the Art Deco Society, who wanted the hotel integrated into the future school.

A settlement was finally reached at the end of August 2005 that allowed the Ambassador Hotel demolition to go forward in exchange for the establishment of a $4.9 million fund, earmarked for saving historic school buildings in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In January of 2006 the last section of the Ambassador Hotel came down, leaving only the annex that housed the hotel entrance, a shopping arcade, the coffee shop, and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, all of which will be reused for the school.

But why did it have to come to this at all? No doubt, by the time the hotel closed in 1989, the surrounding area had fallen prey to gang and drug problems. But downtown Los Angeles has since begun to experience a bit of a renaissance. If the Los Angeles Unified School District had maintained it, it's not hard to imagine it being one of the centerpieces of the downtown rebirth. As many as seven U.S. Presidents stayed at the Ambassador, from Hoover to Nixon, not to mention dozens of heads of state. For years, the hotel's famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub hosted the Academy Awards and served as the launching point of such performers as Barbra Streisand, Bing Crosby, and Richard Pryor. Infamously, and perhaps reason alone to preserve this site, is the fact that Robert Kennedy was shot here in the hotel's kitchen, shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, following a short victory speech in one of the hotel's ballrooms.

In the end, Kennedy's family may have been the strongest voice against saving the Ambassador. Many in the preservation community hoped that the Ambassador could have been saved, restored to its onetime grandeur and the site of a living history museum where one of our nation's greatest tragedies took place, but the Kennedys wanted it destroyed.

Today at the site are scant remainders of what once stood here. Some broken tiles in the dirt, a lone tower with the hotel's name ghosted in the cement, and a few small pieces of building. The school is set to open in 2010.

Hats Off

Just across the street from the former Ambassador Hotel is the site of another Hollywood landmark that's been stripped away… or has it? The Brown Derby restaurant, shaped like a derby hat, was a celebrity hangout and the site of many after-parties following ceremonies at the Ambassador. It was here where the Cobb Salad was invented in 1937 (named for the owner, Robert Cobb), and though other Derbies opened around town, this was the most famous one (and the only one shaped like a hat).

The Brown Derby closed in the mid 1980s, and it appeared that another classic (albeit kitschy) landmark was about to be destroyed to make way for the inevitable strip mall. But it wasn't. The actual shell of the Brown Derby was restored in the late 1980s and placed on top of the strip mall that took its spot. Now painted orange, it tops an Indian restaurant.

Last year there was good news for another Brown Derby, this one located in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. A developer planned to bulldoze the 1928 structure to build a five-story complex of more than 80 luxury condos and retail shops. But the community spoke up, and the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to declare the entire structure a Historic Cultural Monument of the City of Los Angeles in May 2006.

Perhaps things are changing a bit in Los Angeles. Celebrities like Brad Pitt and Diane Keaton have elevated an interest in architecture and historic preservation.

"In the flats of Beverly Hills, there are still blocks of homes that for some reason have retained their original beauty. It's sad that so many get ripped apart. I'm always thrilled when they survive," Diane Keaton told Preservation magazine in 2003. "Houses enrich our lives with their history and the beauty of the architecture or their eccentricity, the details. You have to try to preserve some originals."

Chris Epting, the author of eight books, writes for the Los Angeles Times, Westways, and Travel + Lesiure magazine and is the national spokesman for Hampton Inn hotel's Hidden Landmarks program.

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