STRIP CLASSIC

GARDEN OF ALLAH

The Garden of Allah quickly became a hit with the Hollywood elite and visiting New York literati after silent-movie star Alla Nazimova converted her mansion at 8150 Sunset Boulevard into a hotel in 1927. The hotel had 25 bungalows and a pool, around which Robert Benchley supposedly uttered his immortal “let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.” Trysts were consummated, starlets frolicked and the press amazingly left them alone. The Garden was leveled in 1959 to make way for a savings and loan (inspiring, according to another legend, the Joni Mitchell lyric “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”). All that remains today is a scale model inside the bank.

SUNSET TOWERS

The Strip’s first high-rise, completed in 1931, the Sunset Towers was architect Leland Bryant’s elegant blend of Moderne and Art Deco. The 12-story structure at 8358 Sunset offered spectacular views and attracted a stellar clientele that included John Wayne, Preston Struges and Bugsy Siegel. (Howard Hughes reportedly rented several rooms for various girlfriends). Boarded up by the ‘80s and seemingly headed for the wrecking ball, it was restored by a group of investors and reopened as a branch of London’s St. James Club. Today, swanky-looking as ever, it carries on as the Argyle hotel.

CLOVER CLUB

Situated where La Cienega dead ends into Sunset, the Clover Club was run by mobsters Milton “Farmer” page and Nola Han as a gambling joint with pedigree. The general public had access to the restaurant, while “special guests” were invited into a back room, hidden by mirrors, called the Bacon Club, where machine-gun-toting goons kept watch over Hollywood’s richest gamblers. Dropping 100 grand in an evening was not uncommon. Periodic raids by the police and the emerging popularity of Las Vegas finally drove it from the scene.

PLAYERS

The private playground of director Preston Sturges, Players opened in the summer of 1940. Named after the actors’ club on New York City’s Gramercy Park, Sturges’ Players would close on a whim whenever the boss wanted the place to himself. In financial straits from the start, the Players nevertheless was a big hit with the Hollywood crowd. Sturges installed a dance floor with a revolving bandstand and offered the industry the best in food, service and decor. Poor management and changing tastes finally did in Sturges’ plaything in December 1953, but the building lives on as the Roxbury nightclub.

SPAGO

The Strip was in dire need of new restaurant blood when, in 1982, Wolfgang Puck opened Spago on the site of the former Russian restaurant Kavkaz. Puck’s creation was an instant hit, drawing celebrities back to the Strip to sample the former Ma Maison chef’s fanciful designer pizzas and the glittering view of nighttime L.A. from its perch above a Budget rental car operation. Agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar made his Oscar night party an institution there. Puck’s announcement this year that he plans to move Spago to the site of the former Bistro Gardens in Beverly Hills has been stalled by litigation from original Spago shareholders, which may keep the original intact for now.