I found two of the same photo, but they have different color hues:
Holiday Bowl, Los Angeles, 1958.
(Jack Laxer on VLA & Aplusd)
At first I just thought this another great coffee shop from the googie era, but on looking for the location I have discovered this place was not only a coffee shop, but encompassed a pool hall, bowling alley and a bar. It also has historical importance, was designated a landmark, but ultimately has morphed into a drugstore and the coffee shop itself is now a Starbucks. Some fascinating historical info:
Located at 3730 Crenshaw Boulevard, the Holiday Bowl was important in the desegregation of Los Angeles and served an Anglo American, African American, and Japanese American clientele. The coffee shop served a huge cross section of ethnic dishes: Japanese (saifun, yakisoba, donburi, udon), Chinese (a vast assortment of chow mein, pork noodles, foo yong) and black Southern (hot links, grits, salmon patties, short ribs, biscuits and gravy). And hamburgers.
The Bowl was built by Japanese entrepreneurs as a combination bowling alley, pool hall, bar and coffee shop in 1958 and served Crenshaw's Japanese residents who "had not long before suffered Manzanar's internment camps and a blanket racial ban by the American Bowling Congress."
A Los Angeles Times magazine story noted: "Once haunted at 4 a.m. by swing-shift aerospace workers and nighthawk Central Avenue jazz musicians, the Holiday Bowl, like Leimert Park to its south, remains a concrete expression of community in an era when the whole notion of community has been raised to the level of abstraction."
A 1999 L.A. Weekly story said, "Holiday speaks of Crenshaw’s bright, enduring middle-class dreams, with its ’50s-inspired orange-and-green décor and giant plate-glass window that affords a grand view of Baldwin Hills to the south."
The owner said he took pride in Holiday’s staying power, in its history, and the fact that it was designed by Armet & Davis, "the architectural firm that popularized Googie-style coffee shops and turned diners like Holiday and the nearby Wich Stand into zig-zaggy emblems of L.A. optimism." Helen Liu Fong was the designer at Armet & Davis who is credited with designing the Holiday Bowl. He said the building was not damaged during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and that people bowled that night.
The above is culled from several sources including these:
Holiday Bowl History Project:
http://www.holidaybowlcrenshaw.com/community.html
Crenshaw Community and the History of the Holiday Bowl/KCET:
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures...iday-bowl.html
Lots of b&w pictures on the Library of Congress website that look like they were taken when it was vacated or closed, of the exterior and interior:
www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ca3275/
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Excellent job on the Sterry House GW. Don't you think Judge Sterry looks like Jules Verne?
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