The Knickerbocker

Today's post is a double! I decided to put the pics for the top and bottom sign of The Knickerbocker Hotel. Although it's not a hotel anymore. It used to host a plethora of old Hollywood elite. Check out this link:

Wikipedia

"Built in 1923 by E. M. Frasier in Spanish Colonial style, the hotel catered to the region's nascent film industry. Rudolf Valentino was a regular at the bar before his death in 1926. On Halloween 1936, Harry Houdini's widow held her tenth séance to contact the magician on the roof of the hotel.

The hotel retained its glamor through the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio often met in the hotel bar. Elvis Presley stayed at the hotel while filming Love Me Tender."
taken from above link

The bar was also the film location where Dustin Hoffman met Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. It's also had it's fair share of tragedies, with various celebrity deaths in the lobby and around the area.....kinda spooky.

And since the 1970's it's been a senior citizen's home. I'm glad to see they still kept the signs up......if you look closely at the top sign, you'll see the the top billboards used to read "hotel" instead of "The"....I assume this changed when it was converted into a retirement home.


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Hollywood Tower

I took this picture when I was in Hollywood about 3 months ago. As far as I can tell it's an apartment building. No search I made could really find any historical info about the building. I even forget where I was walking when I saw this....I do know it was near the Capital Records building, though. (For those non-LA ers, that's the cylindrical building you see in alot of Hollywood skyline photos. Now that's a building I'd like to work in.) Anyways, back to this building, at first I thought this was an attraction, but it's a few blocks from Hollywood Blvd and there's not much around except the Hollywood freeway (101). The rooftop is pretty cool as well as the chimney, I didn't make it around the side of the building (I was a block away when I snapped this photo).

I found as I was driving south on the 101, towards downtown, that there are alot of apartment buildings with their own neon signs atop. I have a few more, but I know I missed a couple when I was walking......they're so much harder to see from the street.

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