east hollywood

The Hollywood Premiere Motel doesn’t get a lot of rave reviews — in fact, it’s among the lowest ranked lodgings in the city. But thanks to its mid-century Googie design, it is the first motel to join the L.A.’s Historic-Cultural Monument List.

The City Council approved that designation on Wednesday, singling out the 1960 motel and its weathered neon sign as prime examples from the glory days of roadside architecture. There was no opposition or discussion, nor did the motel owner, listed as Yang Hua Xi, take a position.

“It may have a 1.7-star Tripadvisor rating, but we don’t judge our landmarks by thread count,” said Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose 13th District includes the motel, in a statement.

That Tripadvisor score ranks the motel 110th of 118 motels in Los Angeles, and its Yelp reviews aren’t any better. “Felt like puking,” wrote one Yelp user in May.

The two-story motel, which stands at Hollywood Boulevard and Serrano Avenue, was nominated by preservationist James Dastoli.

“This, to me, is a landmark that defines the entire neighborhood of East Hollywood,” Dastoli said at a city Cultural Heritage Committee meeting in March.

“My initial response, looking at the nomination, was, really?” said commission President Barry Milofsky. But he went on to support the designation.

Though the motel parking lot is often empty, its look has attracted frequent filming in the last decade, including TV’s “Twin Peaks,” “Fargo” and “NCIS: Los Angeles,” along with Justin Timberlake’s 2016 “Can’t Stop the Feeling” music video.

In their report on the site, city staffers found that the motel serves as “an excellent example of a 1960s motel that accommodated automobile tourism in Hollywood” and is “a highly intact and rare example of a 1960s motel in Hollywood.”

After the 1960s, the staff report noted that “motels began to fall out of favor as chains such Holiday Inn increasingly dominated the industry” and tourists turned to more compact building types with corridors indoors, not outside.

Soto-Martinez called the Hollywood Premiere “a survivor — still standing after decades of change in Hollywood.”

The Hollywood Premiere was built in 1960 with 42 units in a two-story, stucco-clad building, with a tall, Googie-style neon sign on a pole, parking near the guest rooms and a swimming pool at the corner of the lot behind breeze blocks. It once had a coffee shop, but that space is now idle. The architect was Joyce Miller, a woman working in a trade then dominated by men.

With Tuesday’s vote, the motel joins a Historic-Cultural Monuments list that includes more than 1,300 businesses, homes and landscape features. Begun in 1962, the list includes familiar icons like Union Station, the Bradbury Building and the Hollywood sign but also many less obvious choices, including Taix French Restaurant (built in 1929); the Studio City site of the Oil Can Harry’s bar (which operated from 1968 to 2021; and Leone’s Castle, a 1936 San Pedro apartment building designed to resemble a French castle.

Designation as a city Historic-Cultural Monument doesn’t automatically protect a building from changes or demolition, nor does it trigger any government spending on preservation. But once a building is designated a landmark, the city’s Office of Historic Resources must review permit application before any alterations are allowed. Demolition is forbidden unless an environmental review has been approved.

The city’s staff report also cited several other roadside lodgings that serve as “exemplary and intact examples of the Mid-Century Modern architectural style,” including the Beverly Laurel Motor Hotel (1964), the Wilshire Twilighter Motor Hotel (1958; now known as the Dunes Inn) and the Hollywood Downtowner Motel (1956), which is being converted into 30 interim residences for people at risk of homelessness as part of the state’s Project Homekey. So far, the Downtowner’s twinkling neon sign above Hollywood Boulevard has been preserved.

The historic Griffith Park Pool, built in 1927 and once the largest aquatic facility in Los Angeles, has been dry since 2020. Now, as summer heats up, residents are learning that it won’t be filled again.

Instead, the city is laying plans for a $28-million project to demolish it and build two smaller new pools and a splash pad in its place while reconstructing the two-story pool house next door. City officials say they hope to begin the project in summer 2026 and complete it in January 2028.

But for now, the city’s Recreation and Parks Department website simply lists the pool as “closed until further notice.” A Bureau of Engineering spokesperson said the city has not picked a builder yet.

The Griffith Park Pool, closed in 2020, was still dry on July 1.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

The new plan marks a sharp turn for a site that was once scheduled for reopening in June 2022. In the run-up to that date, the Eastsider news site first reported, city workers found that the pool had a cracked foundation, one too severe to repair.

Recreation and Parks Department spokeswoman Rose Watson said department Assistant General Manager Cathie Santo Domingo and a maintenance team discovered the cracks in the pool. “Every time they would fill it up, it wouldn’t retain the water,” Watson said.

During the closure, neighbors have complained and signed a petition, lamenting that working-class families in Los Feliz, Atwater, Silver Lake and East Hollywood have long depended on that public pool for summer relief.

“I always wondered what was happening with that. I’ve never seen water in it,” said Christine Perez of Los Feliz, who was at a playground near the pool Monday with her 22-month-old son, Miles. “I was literally thinking last week that it would be great if there was a splash pad down here.”

“Kids need a place to go and a place to learn how to swim,” said Marian Dodge, board secretary and past president of the Friends of Griffith Park. She said the group is “actually thrilled that they’re finally going to go ahead and make the necessary repairs. … We have been assured that it is fully funded.”

A city Bureau of Engineering report says the new project will include “demolition and reconstruction,” replacing the old pool with a new competition pool measuring 25 yards by 50 meters (up to 12.5 feet deep) and a “training pool” splash pad that is 25 yards by 25 meters (up to 5 feet deep), along with reconstruction and rehabilitation of the site’s two-story Spanish-style pool house and improvements to changing and shower areas and ADA accessibility.

The new pools are intended to handle year-round use, incorporating electric pool heaters, salt water and UV light water treatment.

Long known as the Municipal Plunge, the pool at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard measures about 225 feet by 48 feet. It was the city’s largest aquatic facility until the arrival of Hansen Dam Recreation Area, built in 1940 in the Lake View Terrace area of the San Fernando Valley.

“You know the L.A. River runs right behind the pool?” said Dodge. “The water level behind the pool is so high, they were unable to concrete the river there.” As a result, when the pool was built, it “was described as a concrete boat floating on top of this sand and mud. It was kind of risky at the beginning, but they did it.”

At one point, the pool’s capacity was put at 562 people.

“They would have canoeing lessons and water parades,” Dodge said.

Now neighbored by tennis courts, a playground, a soccer field and Los Feliz Nursery School, the pool was open until late March of 2020, when the city shut multiple recreation facilities in the early days of the pandemic. It lies within City Council District 4, represented by Nithya Raman.

On May 21, the city Board of Public Works authorized hiring Perkins Eastman to do $2.4 million in architectural design and engineering work on the pools and bathhouse.

The idea of progress on the pool is comforting, Dodge said, given the idle state of the park’s pony rides and merry-go-round, both closed since 2022 for various reasons. The L.A. Zoo, also in Griffith Park, remains open but mired in a legal battle over money between the city and the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn.

In all, the city operates 57 pools (28 seasonal, 26 year-round and three camp pools) and eight splash pads. As of July 2, eight of the pools were closed.

The nearest city-run pools to Griffith Park are Echo Park, Hollywood and Glassell Park. Griffith Park also includes pools at Camp Hollywoodland and Griffith Park Boys Camp.