Bart Lytton commissioned a scale model of the Garden before its demolition. Housed in a domed structure called “the Pavilion,” it depicted the hotel grounds as they looked in the late 1950s. Sheilah Graham noted in her 1970 book: “All that remains on the Sunset Blvd. plot… is a model of the Garden in a glass case. It remains unnoticed by the new nonconformists… the hippies of the Sunset Strip”.
The Pavilion was later demolished to make way for parking. The model was nearly discarded, but a local shop owner rescued and restored it. Today, it survives under glass in a private home in West Hollywood.
Curiously, life-size replicas of some Garden villas exist – not in Hollywood, but at Universal Studios in Orlando. A strange echo of a place that once defined the real Hollywood.
In the 2010s, the former Lytton property was purchased by Townscape Partners. Frank Gehry was tapped to design a mixed-use complex called 8150 Sunset. His revised plans were released in 2020. Demolition and construction were scheduled to begin in 2021.
It has been six decades since the Garden of Allah was demolished, and yet its memory lives on. Maybe it’s the tales of a more glamorous, seemingly carefree life. Maybe it’s its association with so many sophisticates from Hollywood’s glory days. Maybe it’s the irreverent, exotic name. Whatever the reason, curiosity endures about the Garden of Allah. It lives on in our imagiationas. Its mystique is timeless.