Today I strolled past the mounds and mini-valleys of dirt, rock, and God-knows-what where the Ambassador Hotel used to stand on Wilshire Blvd. in L.A. The last remaining component of the 500-room gargantuan is the Cocoanut Grove, where Bing Crosby and Barbara Striesand began their iconic careers. In a few short years, that one-time hottest of Hollywood hotspots will be transformed into a school auditorium.

An L.A.U.S.D. (Los Angeles Unified School District for those of you non-Angelenos) school will occupy the grounds upon which much in the way of Hollywood lore came to be. A modeling agency housed there signed on Marilyn Monroe. Howard Hughes and Jean Harlowe actually lived there for a time (go here for more on the hotel's past).
 

Surveying that mass of carved up and gutted ground I can only imagine what resides there. What have the machines churned up? I bet if you looked really closely (and with the proper implements and extraordinary amounts of time) you could find a hair from Gable's  'stache or a leaf from one of Sammy's j's or a shard from a bottle I threw out there a couple years ago (I used to go up on the roof of my apartment building next door when I was wasted and if memory serves me correctly I launched a dead soldier at the massive air conditioning system on the west roof).




Whatever the case, the razing of this landmark has caused a furor among preservationists. I doubt they'd be singing the same tune, though, had they spent time in any of the decrepit, overcrowded public schools in the area where asbestos tiles dangle and groupings of lunch tables are often utilized as classrooms. While it would have been nice to keep the building around, it just wouldn't have been logical in view of the dire need for viable learning spaces for the city's students.

Come on people, the Ambassador will live on. There are hundreds of films in existence shot there, which can attest to that. And perhaps some student some day will fully grasp the wealth of history that surrounds him and pass that knowledge and respect for Hollywood's past down to future generations. 

 

For a satellite image from Virtual Earth click here.

Also, "The Ambassador's Last Stand" is a well-documented look back at all things Ambassador.