By the late 1950s, the Garden of Allah Hotel had fallen into a decline, overrun by call girls and cockroaches. The lot at 8152 Sunset was eventually purchased by Lytton Savings & Loan which had developed a plan to rip out the 2.5 park-like campus and convert the property into the shopping center that is there now. In August 1959, the outgoing management threw one last party before the bulldozers came. Booze flowed, Alla Nazimova’s surviving films were projected onto walls and people fell into the pool, a Garden of Allah tradition since 1927.