During an afternoon session Tuesday at Los Angeles’ City Hall, the Planning and Land Use Management Committee voted to recommend to the City Council that the original Hollywood Reporter building located at 6713 West Sunset Blvd. be included in the list of Historic-Cultural Monuments. That means that the process of naming it to landmark status goes to the full City Council in the next few weeks.
“What we’d like to see is the building adapted to some other use and not torn down,” says L.A.’s Art Deco Society president Margot Gerber. “This structure is an integral part of Hollywood history, so much happened here.”
The Regency Moderne-style building has been under threat of destruction by a Harridge Development Group project that would include a hotel and two residential towers. The complex would be centered where the nearby Crossroads of the World complex stands. (That landmark structure would not be touched.)
The old THR building sits on Sunset Boulevard between North Las Palmas Avenue and North McCadden Place. In 1936, THR founder Billy Wilkerson took over the existing structure and had architect Arthur W. Hawes added a seconnd floor that would house the paper’s editorial operations.
“A stunning example of American Art Deco” was the way Wilkerson’s son William described the building in a statement read to the PLUM committee,
THR moved from the site in the late 1980s, and it was occupied by LA Weekly until 2008.
