Felix Chevrolet

Auto dealer Winslow Felix put up this classic sign in 1957 when he got permission from his friend, filmmaker Pat Sullivan, to use the Felix the Cat image on his Chevrolet dealership. Felix Chevrolet still operates as a car dealership and is located at West Figueroa Boulevard and South Jefferson Street next to the University of Southern California campus.


Here is a closer view of the 3-sided sign:
Unlike most of L.A.'s 1950s signs, the Felix Chevrolet sign is protected from unilateral demolition or alteration because it was designated as a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2007.

1950's Diners

In the 1950s, people thought that the future would be full of odd angles, flying saucers, boomerangs, and things shaped like parabolas. This futuristic style, which was particularly popular for diners, motels, car washes, and bowling alleys, originated in Southern California and is called "Googie." Although many of the old Googie buildings have been destroyed, Los Angeles still has hundreds of Googie-style roadside signs and buildings.

Rae's, on Pico Boulevard and 29th Street in Santa Monica:
I got a cheeseburger and soda at Rae's and then took this interior photo on my way out:

Johnie's on Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard is a classic Googie diner designed in 1955 by Helen Fong of Arnet & Davis, the premiere L.A. coffee shop and diner architects of the 1950s. Johnie's stopped operating as an active diner in 2000 and its original 1950s interior is now used exclusively for movie and television filming. Billboards, SUVs, construction, and street lights conspired to try ruin my photo:
A view of the back entrance:
The old sign for Johnie's Diner is now used for the 99 Cent Store parking lot:

Norms is still an active diner chain serving gross food to people all over the Southland. The original Norms is on La Cienega Boulevard and Melrose Avenue and was also designed by Helen Fong of Arnet & Davis in 1957:

Johnnies Pastrami is on Sepulveda Boulevard and Washington Place in Culver City:
A crown dots the "i" on the beautiful Johnnies sign. I have no idea what "French Dip" means:

The Mission Family Restaurant and Coffee Shop in Pomona:
Here is a typical Googie bowling sign across the street from Santa Monica High School on Pico Boulevard and 3rd Street:

Another bowling alley sign on Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance:

The popular Culver City Ice Rink, also on Sepulveda Boulevard, has a beautiful sign and skating lady out front:


The Half Moon, the Astro, and Deano's are a string of cheap motels on Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City:


If you like this type of classic mid-century L.A. design, you might also like my posts on Randy's Donuts, architect Welton Becket, the Union 96 gas station, and the Chemosphere House.

Randy's Donuts

Randy's drive-through donut shop is one of the most iconic examples of mid-century "programmatic" architecture, in which the shape of a building represents the product sold at the location. This style of roadside architecture was particularly popular in Los Angeles in the 1950s and was designed to be easily readable from the freeway.


Randy's was built in 1953 as part of the Big Donut Chain, a series of drive-through donut shops which included locations in Culver City, Van Nuys, and North Hollywood. The Randy's giant donut is 32.5 feet high (9.9 meters) and is made of a steel frame with a sprayed concrete exterior.


Randy's has featured in countless movies, television shows, video games, and music videos. It's a good place to stop for a treat if you are on your way to or from LAX as it is located in Inglewood 1 mile from the airport, is open 24 hours a day, and sells delicious donuts at cheap prices.


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The Chemosphere

The Malin House, better known as the "Chemosphere," is another one of L.A.'s iconic mid-century modern residences. Los Angeles architect John Lautner (1911-1994) built the futuristic, octagonal house in 1960 for a young engineer named Leonard Malin who inherited a small plot of land just off of Mulholland Drive. The land was too steep to build a normal house on, so Lautner designed the building to float on top of a 30-foot high concrete pillar. He burried the pillar deep into the hillside so the structure is stable enough to withstand earthquakes and mudslides.

The Chemosphere was used as a residence for several decades and then fell into disrepair in the 1990s when the owners began to rent the house out for parties. In 2000, German art publisher Benedikt Taschen purchased the Chemosphere when he relocated Taschen Publishing's American headquarters to Los Angeles from New York. Taschen has extensively renovated the interior of the house and now uses it as his Los Angeles residence.

The Chemosphere is accessible only by a private funicular that ascends the hillside. The house is on the North side of the Hollywood Hills and has wrap-around windows to take advantage of sweeping views over the San Fernando Valley:

The Chemosphere is located at 7776 Torreyson Drive off of Mulholland Drive. Unfortunately, the interior is not open to the public, but there are good views of the house from Torreyson Drive.


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Welton Becket's Los Angeles

Prolific L.A. architect Welton Becket (1902-1969) designed dozens of buildings in Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1960s that reflected and shaped a distinctive L.A. aesthetic.

Becket built the Cinerama Theater on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard in 1963. The Cinerama is modeled on the geodesic dome design by inventor/architect/engineer/artist Buckminster Fuller and it is the earliest and the largest geodesic dome theater in the world. ArcLight Cinemas re-opened the Cinerama in 2002 after installing extra-comfy seats, upgrading the acoustics, and adding additional theaters in the adjacent building. The Cinerama is still a popular location for Hollywood movie openings.

In the 1950s, people in Southern California liked buildings to be shaped like whatever was sold or made in the building. There are still donut shops here that have giant donuts on top of them and hot dog stands shaped like hot dogs (somewhat more distastefully, there is even a parking enforcement building in West L.A. that is shaped like a parking meter). Welton Becket's Capitol Records building in Hollywood was completed in 1956 and was the world's first round office building. Its 12 circular stories and wrap-around shades are supposed to look like a stack of records:

The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, built in 1959, includes six 72-foot high concrete masts that are reminiscent of 1950's Cadillac fins. Behind the giant masts and the entrance canopy, a cast concrete grille runs the length of the building and gives the facade a beautiful, delicate look.

At the downtown Los Angeles Performing Arts Center, Becket built the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion between 1964 and 1969 with a gently swooping roof:

Across the plaza from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Becket-designed Mark Taper Auditorium, also built between 1964 and 1969, consists of a circular theater surrounded by a dark blue moat and a free-standing, square-shaped colonnade. The circular drum of the theater is encased in a 378-foot long cast concrete relief in an abstract pattern:

The Schoenberg Hall at the Herb Alpert School of Music, which appeared in my blog post on UCLA, was built by Welton Becket in 1955 and is decorated with a mosaic by modern artist Richard Haines:

Mid-Century Dingbat Apartments

"Dingbats" are boxy 2-3 story walk-up apartment building from the 1950s and 1960s with front overhanging parking areas. According to Wikipedia "in spite of their serviceability as functional, affordable housing, and the niche appeal of their trappings and trim, dingbats are widely reviled as socially alienating visual blights which typify Los Angeles architecture at its worst." I like the simple forms and quirky exteriors of the dingbats, but it's true that some dingbats are unpleasant inside with low ceilings and small windows.




Dingbats typically each contain about 6-10 apartment units and extend all the way back to rear service alleys where there is additional space for parking and garbage disposal. In the 50s and 60s, many developers tore down single family homes, including hundreds of craftsmen bungalows, and built dingbats to replace them in order to increase the number of units that they could fit onto one lot.

All of the pictures in this post are from the Palms neighborhood - a convenient, affordable, and diverse area on L.A.'s Westside that is popular among UCLA grad students.

I've highlighted the streets in Palms where I took these pictures:


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