The famous West Hollywood bungalow court ‘The Garden Of Allah’ was on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights in West Hollywood and was host to all kinds of east coast Hollywood transplants for well over thirty years (specializing in alcoholic self-loathing Broadway playwrights and their ilk). Click here for an excellent Wikipedia entry on how it began life as a private estate constructed in 1913 for a man named William Hay before turning into the residence of actress Alla Nazimova, who then added the many bungalows on the periphery of the property thus turning it into the luxurious little hotel/lodge that we know it as. The place was demolished in late 1959 and became home to Lytton Savings Bank, a quite lovely piece of mid-century architecture that was itself demolished two years ago to make way for a massive Frank Gehry mixed-use urban mini-city, a project which has now been put on indefinite hold. The large site is now entirely empty and seems likely to remain that way for years to come.

In August of 1959 a public auction of items belonging to The Garden of Allah was announced. The above reel of home movie footage appears to have been taken by an attendant of that sale on a hot and smoggy LA summers day. After the wrecking ball took the place down the only real record of its layout and design came in the form of a meticulously made miniature model which was displayed under glass in the Lytton Bank. When my parents and I first moved to LA in 1968 we lived in an apartment a few blocks away on Laurel Avenue. At night we’d take a walk over to the bank to look at the illuminated model. For some reason I remember this as clearly as if it happened yesterday, though most of my memories of that period of my five year old life are hazy at best or missing entirely. So what was the fate of that model? It appears to have disappeared long before the recent demolition of the bank. But to where? Into whose hands did it fall? Click here to read a fine piece by L.A. historian/author Martin Turnball who will explain it all to you, along with showing you some dandy pictures of the model.