While this 1920s Hollywood apartment building is anything but glamorous, its story says a lot about the development of Hollywood over the past century.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 13, 2018

Hollywood is full of apartment lore: the sometimes accurate, often apocryphal, difficult-to-disprove lists of actors that stayed in any given complex. If all the stories are true, then Charlie Chaplin lived in pretty much every apartment building and house in Hollywood. 

There are no such stories spread about the Hollywood Argyle Apartments. Unlike the Villa Bonita or El Cabrillo Apartments in nearby Whitley Heights, the Hollywood Argyle wasn’t built by Cecil B. Demille to house his actors and crew; it wasn’t a fashionable neo-Moorish oasis for film celebrities, like the Zwebells’ whimsical courtyards (see visits #30-32).

What the four-story Hollywood Argyle is, is a window into a Hollywood in transition. Back in 1926, when construction began on a design by local architect L.A. Smith, Hollywood was in the middle of turning from an LA suburb into an urban center in its own right. LA’s population more than doubled between 1920 and 1930, from 577,000 to more than 1.2 million, and many of Hollywood’s single-family homes were replaced with low to mid-rise, multi-family dwellings to accommodate all the new transplants attracted to the film industry. 

Complexes like the Hollywood Argyle were largely intended as housing for temporary residents and small, middle-class families for whom a single-family home was either unattainable, or undesirable. Of the 15 families who reported living at the Hollywood Argyle in the 1930 US Census, only four had children; there were also 22 single residents, both men and women, who likely occupied the bachelor and single apartments. Somewhat atypically for mid-rises of this kind, the Hollywood Argyle offered services more often found at a hotel, another indication that the landlord was expecting temporary residents.  

“Hollywood’s newest & most beautiful apartment. Just completed. Bachelors, singles, doubles and 4 room apartments. Beautifully furnished with luxurious Spanish furniture. Velour drapes, electric refrigeration, steam heat, daily maid service, gorgeous lobby and last but not least, plenty of closet and drawer space.”

-ad for the Hollywood Argyle Apartments, LA Times, Feb. 1927 (see ad in the NRHP nomination form)

L.A. Smith was something of a serial apartment designer in Hollywood. In addition to the Hollywood Argyle, he was responsible for the St. George Apartments (now Villa Elaine) on Vine and three buildings on Cherokee: the Canterbury Apartments, Roland Apartments (now The Commodore) and Cherokee Manor (now closed). In all of these, he channeled the Italian/Mediterranean renaissance styles, but in more subdued ways than some of his contemporaries. On the facade of the Hollywood Argyle, you can see the stucco walls, stone door surround and decorative terracotta panels typical of his work; the panels on the top floor are emblazoned with “HA,” like a fake family crest.  

Following its promising early years, the Hollywood Argyle entered a long period of decline. Ads during the early ‘30s show lower rental prices, to attract middle class folks hit hard by the Great Depression. After WWII, the boom in single-family houses in the San Fernando Valley led to many residents leaving Hollywood; the development of freeways hastened that change. As the area drained of dwellers, crime rates increased, and by the ‘80s, many Hollywood apartment complexes like the Hollywood Argyle were mostly occupied by drifters and unhoused people. A 1995 LA Times article reported that the Hollywood Argyle’s owners were fined for allowing “life threatening slum conditions.” The complex was shut down for two years and sold to a new owner who made a full renovation. 

When I visited, I saw a few 20-somethings walking in and out of the Hollywood Argyle. Were they students? Actors? Tourists? Who knows? The dingy “lobby” felt anything but inviting. But I thought back to my first apartment after I left my parents’ house, a renovated 1927 apartment building in East Hollywood just on the other side of the wall from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The rooms were small, the amenities were nearly non-existent, and the paint was peeling everywhere. But it was cheap and it was my space, a temporary homebase for living out my professional dreams and enjoying being a young person in a big city. Gotta appreciate spots like the Hollywood Argyle Apartments for serving that role to its residents, nearly a century after it was originally built.

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+Hollywood Argyle Apartments’ NRHP nomination form