Driving Downtown Neighborhoods - Hollywood - Los Angeles California USA - Episode 17.\r
Starting Point: Hollywood Boulevard .\r
Hollywood is an ethnically diverse, densely populated, relatively low-income neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is notable as the home of the U.S. film industry, including several of its historic studios, and its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the industry and the people in it.\r
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Hollywood was a small community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, and soon thereafter a prominent film industry emerged, eventually becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world.\r
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Motion Picture Industry\r
Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO, and Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth-largest industry in the nation.\r
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Hollywood became known as Tinseltown because of the glittering image of theindustry. Hollywood has since become a major center for film study in the United States.\r
Development\r
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In 1923, the Hollywood sign was erected in the Hollywood Hills, reading HOLLYWOODLAND, its purpose being to advertise a housing development. In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce entered a contr with the City of Los Angeles to repair and rebuild the sign. The contr stipulated that LAND be removed to spell HOLLYWOOD and reflect the district, not the housing development.\r
During the early 1950s, the Hollywood Freeway was constructed through the northeast corner of Hollywood.\r
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The Capitol Records Building on Vine Street, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, was built in 1956, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame was created in 1958 as a tribute to artists and other significant contributors to the entertainment industry. The official opening was on February 8, 1960.\r
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The Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.\r
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The Dolby Theatre, which opened in 2001 as the Kodak Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center mall, is the home of the Oscars. The mall is located where the historic Hollywood Hotel once stood.\r
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Revitalization\r
After years of serious decline in the 1980s, many Hollywood landmarks were threatened with demolition. Columbia Square, at the northeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, is part of the ongoing rebirth of Hollywood. The Art Deco-style studio complex completed in 1938, which was once the Hollywood headquarters for CBS, became home to a new generation of broadcasters when cable television networks MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Spike TV consolidated their offices here in new as part of a $420-million office, residential and retail complex. Since 2000, Hollywood has been increasingly gentrified due to revitalization by private enterprise and public planners.\r
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Notable Places\r
CBS Columbia Square\r
Charlie Chaplin Studios\r
Cinerama Dome\r
Crossroads of the World\r
Dolby Theatre\r
Earl Carroll Theatre (currently Nickelodeon on Sunset)\r
El Capitan Theatre\r
Fredericks of Hollywood\r
Gower Gulch\r
Graumans Egyptian Theatre\r
Hollywood & Western Building\r
Hollywood and Highland Center\r
Hollywood and Vine\r
Hollywood Forever Cemetery\r
Hollywood Heritage Museum\r
Hollywood Palladium\r
Hollywood Masonic Temple\r
Hollywood Museum\r
Hollywood Walk of Fame\r
Hollywood Wax Museum\r
Knickerbocker Hotel\r
Madame Tussauds Hollywood\r
Musso & Frank Grill\r
Pantages Theatre\r
Roosevelt Hotel\r
Sunset Gower Studios\r
TCL Chinese Theatre\r
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