Chili Bowl (West Los Angeles)
Photo by Marcello Vavala/L.A. Conservancy
From: Los Angeles Conservancy: UPDATE: the Conservancy’s Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) nomination for the Chili Bowl will soon return to City Council for review and consideration. The City is rescinding is prior vote and action regarding this HCM nomination. This means on November 30, the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee will rehear and take a new vote on the Chili Bowl HCM.
Previously, on June 15, PLUM voted to recommend against the Chili Bowl following Councilmember Bonin’s office speaking out against this nomination. The problem is the public was blocked from speaking at this meeting, including the Conservancy as the applicant.
Olneyville New York System Is Lit with a New Neon Sign
The new sign at Olneyville New York System looks just like the original.
From Rhode Island Monthly: Bad news just turned into good news at Olneyville New York System in Providence. About five months ago, the owner of the historic hot wieners neighborhood fixture found out that the original, sixty-seven-year-old neon sign from 1954 had deteriorated so much that it could not be restored. Over the last twenty years, a fabricator named Mario had repaired the sign on a periodic basis to keep it running until they discovered that removing the neon would not save the iconic marker.
Olneyville New York System owner Greg Stevens posted on Instagram: “Upon further inspection, it appears our sign has deteriorated to the point that it may not be able to be saved. Rust has [weakened] it where we may have no choice but to fabricate a new one…stay tuned.”
Retro motels enjoy a renaissance on the Gold Coast
The Mysa Hotel in Palm Beach. Photo: Trent Mitchell
From commercialrealestate.com.au: Remember childhood holidays at the Gold Coast, spent cruising the palm-lined streets in search of a motel with a glowing vacancy sign? It was a time when a kidney-shaped swimming pool and rattling in-room air conditioning was considered a luxury.
Now, the Gold Coast’s retro hotels and motels are enjoying a renaissance, allowing holidaymakers to recreate those old-school holiday vibes, but with all the modern conveniences.
The Mysa Motel at Palm Beach, formerly the Palm Trees Motel, is the latest to be transformed from daggy to vintage chic, with its boutique offering of only seven rooms providing a luxurious and sustainable stay that the big hotels just can’t match.
Neon Pegasus in Dallas Skyline to Undergo Repairs
From NBCDFW: It’s a major part of the Dallas skyline, and the red neon Pegasus atop the Magnolia Hotel is about to undergo a major renovation.
The Dallas Morning News reports that a brilliant neon Pegasus icon was placed on top of the headquarters of the Magnolia Oil Company back in 1934. The red Pegasus stayed lit atop the old Magnolia building until 1999, when the rusty symbol was removed and replaced with a shiny new version that was lit on Jan. 1, 2000. The original Pegasus, however, was hidden away in a storage shed until 2015, when it was renovated and placed in front of the Omni Dallas Hotel downtown.That street-level location makes it more visible up close than the high-flying horse on the roof of the Magnolia Hotel.
Now, the replacement Pegasus needs some repair work of its own.
Historic gas station in Orange stays put after development dispute
The nearly century-old gas station building in Orange was recently nominated for the National Register of Historic Places by preservationists. (Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer)
From The LA Times: A small Storybook-style building residing on an Orange street corner has seen better days. Its windows are boarded up. Patches of grass and weeds sprout from broken concrete. And the grounds have been dormant for years since last seeing business as a flower shop.
Still, the slim, two-story edifice’s blue-trimmed, steep-sloped and curved roofs remain whimsical enough to attract curious looks from commuters on Main Street.
Nearly a century ago, the former gas station would have invited now-classic cars to pull up to fuel pumps off of what was once was a stretch of Highway 101, an arterial road connecting Los Angeles to San Diego through Orange County.
In Seattle, a 1960s Roadside Motel Gets a 21st-Century Update
From Metropolis: Capitalizing on the surge of road trippers whizzing across America after World War II, Seattle’s Imperial 400 Motel was part of a nationwide chain that established hundreds of roadside motels in the 1960s. Designed to welcome car traffic when it opened in 1962—particularly visitors coming to Seattle for the Century 21 Exposition, which was the Space Needle’s raison d’être—the Imperial 400 turned inward over the years with a series of additions intended to buffer ever-increasing road noise. Now the hotel has reopened with an updated design by local firm Wittman Estes, and a new name: the Civic Hotel.
Located at the entrance to the recently opened State Route 99 tunnel, a major infrastructure project, which shifted traffic away from the now-demolished elevated viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront, the Civic Hotel took advantage of the reduced noise level with the redesign. “We wanted it to be an anchor in the neighborhood,” says Neha Nariya, who owns the hotel with her father, Vrajlal Nariya. “We’re right at the ‘hello/goodbye’ corner with the tunnel’s yellow ventilation stacks behind us.”