Hollywood sign,

Description

California has long possessed the lure of material and personal fulfillment. What started as a destination for those hoping to strike gold became, in the late 19th century, a mecca for anyone with real or imagined ailments. The state’s temperate climate and natural springs, guidebooks claimed, possessed “restorative powers for weakened dispositions.” The state’s gold has since been drained, and the quest for perfect health has spread to rest of the country. But the erection of the famed Hollywood sign in 1923 marked the start of another phase, one still with us today. During that decade, a real estate development group, one of whose principal backers was Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, built a large sign – essentially a billboard – on an unnamed mountain between the Los Angeles basin and the San Fernando Valley. “Hollywoodland,” the sign read. Its 40,000 blinking light bulbs advertised a new housing development built to accommodate the city’s surging population, which more than doubled during the 1920s to become the fifth largest in the country, as the city drew people from all over the country for its weather, open spaces and jobs. The city of Hollywood had been absorbed into Los Angeles only a decade earlier. At the time, it was a wealthy area that had grudgingly accepted the movie business. Many mansions dotted the hillsides below the sign, and utopian communities like Krotona, the U.S. headquarters of a mystical organization called the Theosophical Society, had sprung up in the foothills and on the flats. Accordingly, early advertising for Hollywood land emphasized the development’s exclusivity. It would offer an escape from the smog, dirt and unwelcome neighbors of downtown Los Angeles.

Facts about Acropolis

• The sign wasn’t created to advertise movies and starlets; it was created to advertise real estate. Developers S. H. Woodruff and Tracy E. Shoults began developing a new neighbourhood called “Hollywoodland.” The sign was meant to act as a huge billboard to draw new home buyers to the hillside.
• Each letter originally stood 15 meters and 9.1 meters wide high, but renovations in 1978 resized the letters to 14 m tall and anywhere from 9.4 to 12 meters wide.
• The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Depression during the 1930’s halted real estate development. Since lots were no longer being sold, illuminating the Hollywoodland sign was no longer a priority. Times were tough, so caretaker Albert Kothe stripped the copper wiring from the sign and sold it for scrap.
• . In the 1940s, the sign’s official caretaker, Albert Kothe, destroyed the “H” after crashing into it while driving drunk.
• H- Terrence Donnelly (a newspaper publisher) O- Alice Cooper (rock star) L- Les Kelley (businessman and creator of the Kelley Blue Book) L- Gene Autrey (singer and actor) Y- Hugh Hefner (founder of Playboy magazine) W- Andy Williams (singer) O-Giovanni Mazza (Italian movie producer) O- Warner Bros. Studios D-Thomas Pooley

Details Of This Palace

1	Architect		:		Thomas Fisk Goff
2	Old name		:		HOLLYWOODLAND
3	construction		:		1923
4	Length		:		352 feet
5	Height		:		44-feet (13.4 m)-
6	Width		:		450 feettd>

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