In 1931, after
Charles H. Crawford's death, his wife Ella decided to build a multi-national outdoor market that would feel like "a permanent world's fair with a cosmopolitan atmosphere" on the land where her husband was shot. She hired the
Streamline Moderne architect
Robert V. Derrah (who was finishing his work on the
Coca-Cola Building) to design the complex. Derrah designed a ship-shaped structure in the center of the complex. The surrounding buildings represented different countries of the world. The complex originally held 57 shops and cafes, and 36 offices on the upper floors. The Crossroads of the World was inaugurated on October 29, 1936. The new shopping center was not a full-blown success, but it became an excellent model for outdoors malls across the world. Three high-rise buildings are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and of commercial space. Preservationists called the redevelopment project a "
Manhattanization of Hollywood". Eighty-two
Hollywood Regency garden apartments are to be demolished in the project. These rent stabilized apartments are occupied by a decades-old, tight-knit community of largely low-income, predominantly Latino residents. Over 100 apartments in the project will be set aside for very low-income families. ==In popular culture==