Hayvenhurst The estate that later became the Garden of Allah Hotel was built in 1913 by real estate developer William H. Hay in the northwest corner of the Crescent Heights neighborhood, a tract bounded by Sunset Boulevard on the north, Santa Monica Boulevard on the south, Crescent Avenue (later renamed
Fairfax Avenue) on the east and
Sweetzer Avenue on the west, which Hay had subdivided and developed starting in 1905. The estate's original address was 8080 Sunset Boulevard but was later changed to 8152. It occupied a lot that fronted Sunset Boulevard and was bounded by Crescent Heights Boulevard on the east and Hayvenhurst (now spelled Havenhurst) Drive on the west. The property's southern boundary was also the border between the Hollywood district of the city of Los Angeles and the then-unincorporated area that later became the city of
West Hollywood. Hay and his wife Katherine personally supervised construction of the estate. The house had twelve rooms and four bathrooms. The finishes were all in
Circassian walnut that the Hays had collected on a trip to the
Philippines in 1912. The interior walls were covered in canvas and hand-painted. The garage had bays for two cars—a rarity in those days—with rooms upstairs for live-in servants. Construction and landscaping cost an estimated $30,000. The Hays' stay at Hayvenhurst was short-lived. Within a few years they had built and moved into a new house a few blocks east, at 7920 Sunset Boulevard, the site today of the
Directors Guild of America headquarters. William Hay also purchased Encino Ranch, a large tract of land in the
San Fernando Valley that he would later develop into the upscale
Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles. Hayvenhurst reportedly stood unoccupied for several years.
Garden of Alla Stage and screen actress
Alla Nazimova leased Hayvenhurst from William Hay not long after she moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1918. She purchased it outright in 1919. Nazimova jokingly called her new home "The Garden of Alla", which was a reference to her own name and the best-selling 1904 novel
The Garden of Allah, by British author
Robert S. Hichens. Faced with a financial crisis in the mid-1920s after her screen career derailed, Nazimova put her property to work generating an income by building a complex of 25 rental "
villas" around the original house. The opening party for "The Garden of Alla Hotel" was held on January 9, 1927. She found her role as a hotel manager unsuitable and discovered that her unscrupulous partners in the enterprise had nearly bankrupted her, so in 1928 she sold out her remaining interest in the property, auctioned off most of her furniture and other household goods, and went back to the
Broadway stage. By 1930, the owners had normalized the spelling in the hotel's name to "Allah". After Nazimova's renewed Broadway success was cut short by illness in 1938, she returned to Hollywood and rented Villa 24, where she lived until her death in 1945. The Garden of Allah became home to many celebrities and literary figures.
F. Scott Fitzgerald lived there for several months in 1937–38 at the beginning of his final stay in Hollywood. He wrote himself a postcard while there: "Dear Scott — How are you? Have been meaning to come in and see you. I have living [sic] at the Garden of Allah. Yours, Scott Fitzgerald." Fitzgerald's biographer and lover
Sheilah Graham later wrote a book about the place, titled simply
The Garden of Allah. Humorist and actor
Robert Benchley was a frequent resident. An array of Golden Age Hollywood stars and featured players, ranging from
Greta Garbo to
Ronald Reagan, stayed there at least briefly, and so did classical music giants
Sergei Rachmaninoff (who was musically assaulted there by an annoyed
Harpo Marx),
Igor Stravinsky and
Jascha Heifetz.
Humphrey Bogart lived in villa 8, where
Errol Flynn stayed when Bogart was out of town.
Gloria Stuart and
Arthur Sheekman lived at villa 12. by that time the hotel's architectural style was long out of fashion and its environs had become more tacky than glamorous. Land values were rising, historic preservation was still an eccentric notion, and "redevelopment" was a popular civic buzzword. On April 11, 1959, Bart Lytton, president of Lytton Savings and Loan, announced that he had purchased the Garden of Allah Hotel from Beatrice Rosenus and Morris Markowitz for $755,000. Lytton's plans for the property included razing the hotel to make way for a new main branch for his bank, which had formerly been headquartered in the
Canoga Park neighborhood in the
San Fernando Valley. On August 22, 1959, On August 30, an on-site public auction liquidated all the furnishings, fixtures and equipment, along with odds and ends valuable only as souvenirs. Demolition permits were issued on November 2. Within days, all traces of the hotel were gone and construction of the bank building, designed by the Los Angeles-based architect
Kurt Meyer in the
Brutalist architectural style, had begun. The bank building was completed by 1960. By 1962, the bank building received an adjacent addition consisting of a museum and an auditorium called the Lytton Center. By 1968, only eight years after the bank building's completion, Lytton Savings was forced to declare bankruptcy, resulting in the closure of the bank building. The adjacent Lytton Center was closed the following year and converted into a strip mall. By the time the 2010s rolled around, the building was now home to a
Chase bank. In 2016, the building was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. However, in the same year, real estate developer Townscapes Partners secured approvals for a mixed-use development designed by architect
Frank Gehry, which would require the razing of the former bank building. In response to this, the
Los Angeles Conservancy and Friends of Lytton Savings advocacy group waged a preservation campaign to help prevent the building's demolition but ultimately, it was unsuccessful. By April 2021, the building was demolished while the adjacent strip mall (formerly Lytton Center) was demolished much later. As of 2023, the redevelopment of the site failed to push through, leaving the site nothing but an empty lot. == Source of the name ==