The Sunset Strip in its era as Hollywood’s playground was not only an entertainment zone where stars dined, drank and gambled, it was also a desirable address. On a hill above Sunset Plaza midway along the Strip, the Sunset Plaza was the westernmost and last-built luxury apartment building on the Strip. Like all the others, except three, it has been demolished. And none of the three still standing are still apartment buildings. The Chateau Marmont (1929) and Sunset Tower (1939) are repurposed as hotels. The Hacienda Park (1927) is an office building now called the Piazza del Sol.
The Sunset Plaza was an 18-unit apartment building designed by Paul Revere Williams, a prolific designer of celebrity homes and public buildings, and L.G. Sherer and built in 1936 on a 1.65 acre lot. The client was retired photographer Frank S. Hoover and his family.
Paul Williams designed the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Ambassador Hotel, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and other other commercials buildings as well as the Beverly Hills home of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz among other rich and famous clients. That Paul Williams happened to be African-American made his professional success in Jim Crow Los Angeles even more remarkable. According to the Paul R. Williams Project website:
[The Sunset Plaza complex] was a rare example of a privately funded multi-family project designed by Paul R. Williams and L. G. Scherer… Originally conceived as a combination apartment/hotel, the Georgian Revival-style building with interiors by Bullock’s offered potential residents elegance in a grouping of home-like spaces without sacrificing the luxurious features found in single family residences. When completed the three-story complex flanked by its two-story wings cost the Hoovers more than $350,000 to build.
Described as “stately and dignified” in California Arts & Architecture (1937), Williams created a modernized California version of the Georgian Revival. Each apartment had a compact kitchen filled with “all the latest gadgets to aid modern culinary arts” and tiled baths with full glass enclosed showers. An illustrated article stressed the architects’ designs that solutions to a variety of design problems especially how to customize heating and cooling for each of the 18 units. Together the designers adapted a state-of-the-art forced air unit gas furnaces to heat, cool and even clean the circulating air.
Sunset Plaza Apartments became a model for a California style of apartment living. Rental units in the eastern U.S. typically opened off long halls in high rise buildings. Williams’ horizontal design allowed for more individuality in the arrangement of a unit’s rooms, independent heating systems and an exterior treatment allowing each resident his own front door. While these touches added more to the building costs the Hoovers were able to recoup them through higher rents. The pool, tennis court, and attractive landscape were all part of Williams’ original plans and were designed to take advantage of the California sunshine and climate. As important design elements these outdoor amenities extended the tenants’ living space and formed a “nucleus for social festivities.” (The Architect and Engineer, June 1937)
Through the years the Sunset Plaza was home to many celebrities and the grounds and tennis courts were often used as background for studio publicity shots. The pool area became a popular setting for a new Hollywood photographic form: “cheesecake photos of starlets.” Many of the long-time residents lived on the property for decades describing it less like an apartment and more like “a very fine country club” with a fresh change of linen delivered every day.
Celebrity residents in the early years are said to have included Columbia Pictures CEO Harry Cohn; actors Katherine Hepburn, Dorothy Lamour, Ralph Bellamy, Richard Arlen, Carole Landis and James Dean; “Tarzan” author Edgar Rice Burroughs; and mobsters Virginia Hill, Johnny Roselli and Allen Smiley. Big-name musicians who lived there included Alfred Newman, Kay Kyser and Tommy Dorsey.
With one exception, goings-on at the Sunset Plaza rarely made news. In 1944, bandleader Dorsey, his wife, actress Patricia Dane and their neighbor, Allen Smiley, who was Bugsy Siegel’s aide de camp, were arrested after a pre-dawn drunken brawl on the Dorseys’ patio at the Sunset Plaza that left their victim, adventure star Jon Hall, with knife wounds on his head, face and neck that required nearly 50 stitches, including a slice clean through a nostril. (The bandage he wore on his nose is said to have inspired the wound suffered by Jack Nicholson’s character in “Chinatown.”) Dubbed “The Battle of the Balcony” in the press, the controversy raged for months, leading up to the trial in December — a media circus at the end of which, true to form in Los Angeles, charges were dropped against the Dorseys and Smiley.
Decades later, on Christmas Day 1983, the Los Angeles Times reported that the rich and famous tenants at Sunset Plaza had received eviction notices. Three years earlier, Sunset Plaza had been designated a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument. And now new owners had permits to demolish the building. There was speculation that the owners would build a new apartment or condominium project.
The nascent historic preservation movement in Los Angeles rallied to save the building, but the bulldozers came in October 1987. And its replacement was not another apartment building. In 1990, a single-family residence was built in its place. It is there today, secluded behind a tall hedge.