Crossroads of the World is an open-air mall on Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas in Los Angeles. The mall features a central building designed to resemble an ocean liner surrounded by a small village of cottage-style bungalows. It was designed by Robert V. Derrah, built in 1936, and has been called America's first outdoor shopping mall.
Once a busy shopping center, the Crossroads later became private offices, primarily for the entertainment industry with a variety of music publishers and producers, television and film script writers, film and recording companies, novelists, costume designers, publicists, and casting agencies. The owner is planning a new development surrounding the site.
History
In 1931, after Charles H. Crawford's death, his wife Ella decided to build a multi-national outdoor market that would feel like "a permanent world's fair with a cosmopolitan atmosphere" on the land where her husband was shot. She hired the Streamline Moderne architect Robert V. Derrah (who was finishing his work on the Coca-Cola Building) to design the complex.[1]
Derrah designed a ship-shaped structure in the center of the complex. The surrounding buildings represented different countries of the world. The complex originally held 57 shops and cafes, and 36 offices on the upper floors. The Crossroads of the World was inaugurated on October 29, 1936. The new shopping center was not a full-blown success, but it became an excellent model for outdoors malls across the world.[1]
In January 2019, the Los Angeles City Council approved the project to revamp the Crossroads of the World in a move to revitalize the district.[2] Three high-rise buildings are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 square feet (18,000 m2) of commercial space. Preservationists called the redevelopment project a "Manhattanization of Hollywood".[3] Eighty-two Hollywood Regency garden apartments are to be demolished in the project.[4][5] These rent stabilized apartments are occupied by a decades-old, tight-knit community of largely low-income, predominantly Latino residents. Over 100 apartments in the project will be set aside for very low-income families.[6]
