The Hollywood Center Motel fire burned down over 120 years of history

Los Angeles lost a piece of history when the Hollywood Center Motel burned down earlier this week.

The vacant property on Sunset Boulevard had a reputation as a sleazy, dilapidated inn, but the Hollywood Center Motel actually had multiple previous lives.

The building, one of the oldest in the neighborhood, was from a time before urbanization. It was also nominated for historic protection, in part because of its first era as a house.

A symbol of early Hollywood

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.

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But the motel property actually started out as a three-story, Shingle-style home built in 1905, which is an American take on Victorian design known for broad gables.

That was built when Hollywood was an independent city, before it joined the city of L.A. Brian Curran, who co-chairs Hollywood Heritage’s preservation committee, says that during this period, Hollywood was known as a place for retirees to settle down.

“ [It was] marketed as a dry town,” he said. “So it was like, come in, retire among the orange groves and just enjoy life in sunny California.”

The Hollywood Center Motel in 1985.

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Ed Ruscha

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Courtesy Hollywood Heritage

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Hollywood was also changing from agricultural to real estate haven. If you were very well off, you’d live in a lavish Hollywood Hills estate, like Wattles Mansion. If you were more moderate, you’d live in the flat areas to the south, in upper-middle class homes just like the Shingle home.

Changing with the times

The home was first owned by William and Sarah Avery, according to Hollywood Heritage’s nomination petition, who called the home “El Nido” (the nest). They didn’t live there long, but the couple’s luncheon made it into the local paper.

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.

“It physically evolved with the evolution of Hollywood,” Curran said, “but also tells a story about the economic and cultural evolution of Hollywood.”

The motel conversion didn’t 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.

The Hollywood Center Motel opened shortly after in 1956. As TV’s popularity grew, it quickly became a backdrop for crime dramas. It’s 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.

A still of the motel in the TV cop drama "T.J. Hooker." The episode, titled "Sweet Sixteen...and Dead," aired in February 1983.

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Screenshot via Tubi

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The damaged neon sign in 2024.

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Darya Sannikova

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Pexels

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The music industry also got a piece of it. In the 70s, musician Neil Young stayed there because he wanted to sleep in the “sleaziest motel” on Sunset Boulevard.

This was the Hollywood Center Motel’s life for decades — 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. The motel stopped operating three years later.

What the fire means for historic status

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.

The site was eligible for local and state historic status. The city of L.A.’s Cultural Heritage Commission had just voted a few weeks ago to consider that.

But they couldn’t 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.

The home was demolished in the process of stopping the flames.

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Courtesy Hollywood Heritage

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Curran says losing the home in this last fire— the most significant element of the complex — makes the nomination process more challenging, but they’re still pushing for it. He wants protections for the neon sign and breeze block wall. Moving forward, Curran says Hollywood Heritage  will be talking with policymakers about preventing other important sites from the same fate.

“ We know from experience that when you don’t use a building, when there aren’t people inside, they are vulnerable and then they burn,” Curran said. “ We need to do something because this continues to happen.”