The Hollywood-Plaza had not been in business for long before it was dubbed “The Adventurers Club,” b

When Jacob Stern rented half of his barn to Cecil B. De Mille in December of 1913 so the enterprising young easterner could make a movie, he could not possibly cottage inn pizza have known that it was a decision that was to change the fortunes of Hollywood, as well as his own, forever. The barn, located at the southeastern corner of Selma and Vine Streets, was across from Stern's home place, a beautiful tract planted in date palms, oranges and lemons that was considered cottage inn pizza one of the most sightly residences of early Hollywood.
Less than ten years later, the effects of Stern's decision were evident in ways that could scarcely have been more dramatic. Hollywood, which had a population of 5,000 in 1910, had exploded to more than 100,000, and Stern's former barn was now a part of the Famous Players-Lasky Studios, the most important motion picture studio in the world. cottage inn pizza Having made a fortune in the real estate boom that ensued, Stern's attention turned to his former home and on September 16, 1924 he began construction on what was to be Hollywood's second "skyscraper" hotel, the Hollywood-Plaza. The new hotel was an integral part of an ultimately successful plan by Stern and others to turn the intersection of Hollywood and Vine into the area's premier business center.
Herbert M. Baruch, the hotel's contractor, managed to complete cottage inn pizza the ten-story reinforced concrete structure in a record cottage inn pizza thirteen months in spite of encountering major difficulties related to the sediment underlying the hotel's foundation.  Walker Eisen designed the hotel in a vaguely Italianate/Spanish style with a rather austere façade relieved at intervals by artificial stonework. The most notable exterior aspect of the new hotel was, in fact, its landscaping, which had been overseen cottage inn pizza by one of Los Angeles' foremost landscape architects, A.E. Hanson. Careful consideration had been given to the lush and mature grounds of the former Stern estate and incorporated into the new hotel's design were two enclosed patios, cottage inn pizza or plazas, for which the hotel derived its name. One of the plazas, christened Patio de Los Palmas , included a dense grove of date palms and other rare specimen plants arranged around a large stone fountain.
In notable contrast to its somewhat plain exterior, the Hollywood-Plaza's interior spaces were considered quite elegant and, at times, elaborate. Entered through a classically designed stone entrance portal, the hotel's graceful double-height lobby featured a carved and painted beamed ceiling, "aged" for effect, from which hung several intricately-designed wrought iron chandeliers. The lobby, like the rest of the hotel, was decorated by George G. Benedict, a fashionable designer cottage inn pizza of the day, in what the Los Angeles Times called, "the charm of Latin artistry." Red and gold silk damask draperies covered the lobby's picture windows while hand-woven carpets blanketed the marble floors with a pile so thick it caused one overzealous press agent to declare "one sinks to a two-inch depth." The adjacent smoking room, also in the Spanish mode was a decidedly masculine affair that was described in overheated prose as, "an ideal place to woo My Lady Nicotine."  For the Ladies' Reception Room, located on the mezzanine level, Benedict veered from the Spanish and produced a space "Frenchy and dainty" that was held to be (inaccurately) as "almost a replica of the famous boudoir of Marie Antoinette." Further to the guests' convenience cottage inn pizza were a barbershop, cottage inn pizza beauty parlor and a cigar counter, all located on the lobby level, as was the hotel's restaurant, Klemtner's Blue Plate Café, the first of a long series of eating establishments to occupy the space.
The Plaza's 198 guestrooms and suites, each with its own tiled bath and dressing room with built-in vanity, were decorated by Benedict in variations of three different color schemes: Biltmore green, Biltmore blue and French gray. Each room was equipped with writing desks, Morris chairs, settees and custom magazine cottage inn pizza stands. Sixty percent of the Plaza's rooms were furnished with hide-away beds, allowing each room to be a "parlor" during the day.
With its October 15, 1925 opening, the Hollywood-Plaza bid fair to become the film capital's most cosmopolitan and sophisticated hostelry, hosting a monthly "Salon," which featured a wide-ranging assemblage of noted speakers, musical performers, dancers and artists. Some of the programs included talks by composer Charles Wakefield Cadman , stage and screen star Ruth Chatterton, Chief Little Bison, who spoke on "The Arts and Crafts of the Vanishing Race," dancer Ruth St. Denis , and Hollywood pioneer Don Eugenio cottage inn pizza Plummer who exhibited cottage inn pizza a rare shawl that had been worn by his mother at the historic ball celebrating the admission of California to the Union in 1850. Musical programs were usually followed with an evening of dancing, to which all were invited. The Plaza also sponsored a revolving art exhibition and, at times, the works of such famed California painters as Hanson Puthoff, cottage inn pizza F.W. Cuprien, Edgar Payne, and Paul Lauritz graced the hotel's walls. One noted artist who took up residence at the hotel was Swedish sculptor David Edstrom, who regularly displayed cottage inn pizza his works there, including his striking bust of Abraham Lincoln, unveiled cottage inn pizza in the lobby on May 29, 1927. The Plaza was also home, for a period, to legendary cartoonist John Held, Jr. , whose exuberant drawings cottage inn pizza came to define the very image of the "Roaring Twenties."
The Plaza's creative atmosphere also attracted a segment of the literary crowd and two of silent Hollywood's cottage inn pizza best known scenario writers, Clara Beranger and Ralph Spence were early Plaza residents, the latter reported to be the highest-paid title writer in the world at a munificent $5.00 a word. Playwright John Wexley, author of The Last Mile and Richard Macaulay, who would become one of Warner Bros.' top screenwriting talents of the 1930's, were also counted as Plaza guests. Siblings Garrett and Carroll Graham whose infamous roman à clef , Queer People , was the scandal of Hollywood upon its publication, with many famous names easily, and unflatteringly, discernable between the lines, also lived at the hotel. cottage inn pizza The most vaunted cottage inn pizza literary figure to take up quarters at the Plaza was Ernest Hemingway cottage inn pizza who stayed at the hotel on his first and only visit to Hollywood in 1937. Hemingway had come west to screen his documentary, The Spanish Earth (1937), cottage inn pizza in an effort to raise money for the loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War.
The Hollywood-Plaza had not been in business for long before it was dubbed "The Adventurers Club," because, as columnist Lee Shippey explained, "so many rare birds of passage make it their temporary home." Indeed, the hotel compiled a guest list of such exceptional diversity it was considered cottage inn pizza striking even by Hollywood standards, a list that included Enrico Caruso, Jr., Death Valley Scotty, Prince Heinrich of Schaumburg-Lippe, Dr. H.A. Barrett, inventor cottage inn pizza of the racetrack starting gate, novelist and conservative MP Sir Gilbert Parker , Babe Ruth, who ripped through the safety netting of the hotel's golf practice range with a particularly cottage inn pizza strong drive, Polar explorer cottage inn pizza Roald Amundsen, William Dolivet, a founder of the French resistance in World War II, the 1937 Green Bay Packers, actor and future Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge, racing legend Barney Oldfield, Gilda Gray, the inventor of the "Shimmy," English opera star Lady Armstrong, Joe Di Maggio, pianist Menahem Pressler and boxers Max Baer and "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom. The latter would be one of the Plaza's most enduring residents, remaining until the hotel's 1973 closure. Furthering the cosmopolitan air of the Plaza were the many aviators and aviation executives, including such legendary figures as Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmie cottage inn pizza Doolittle, Roscoe Turner and Howard Hughes, cottage inn pizza who came to the Plaza at the behest of the Hollywood Aero Club, whose headquarters were located for a number of years on the hotel's cottage inn pizza mezzanine level.
The majority cottage inn pizza of the Plaza's guests during its heyday were, naturally, cottage inn pizza associated with the movies. By the dawn of the 1930's the corner of Hollywood and Vine had become the symbolic center of the motion picture industry and the Plaza could truthfully advertise itself as "Hollywood's most convenient hotel," but a short drive from most of the major studios. Columnist Tipp Poff in his "That Certain Party" column in the Los Angeles Times quipped, "If you've still got a yen to see stars, watch the auto park just south of the Hollywood Plaza Hotel." Fox film star William Russell and his wife actress Helen Ferguson, character actors Burr McIntosh, Charles Ogle and Edward Everett Horton, were all counted as residents of the Plaza in the 1920's as was Barry Norton, Mary Nolan, Ivan Lebedeff, Montagu Love and stage star Jason Robards Sr. Another stage star, Bette Davis, made the Plaza her first Hollywood home upon her arrival in the film capital in 1930. Although Davis departed after she found a suitable home to purchase in nearby Whitley Heights, she would return cottage inn pizza to the Plaza many times including one unhappy occasion when she was greatly embarrassed by the failure of her guest of honor, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to make an appearance at the party Davis threw in her honor at the hotel's It Café in 1938.
Davis' co-star in Dark Victory (1939), Ronald Reagan, also made the Plaza his first stop in the film capital. The future president would make some of his earliest films while living at the hotel, driving over the hill to Warner cottage inn pizza Bros. in what he called "the pride of my life, my first convertible." Some twenty years later, another future president, Richard M. Nixon, made a stop at the Plaza to give a speech during his unsuccessful run for California Governor in 1962. Perhaps not coincidentally, Nixon's longtime political operative, Murray Chotiner had an intimate association with the hotel. His company having done the contracting work on the Plaza during its major remodeling in 1952.
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