With Spring and the month of May comes a very important time for us at Hollywood Heritage - Preservation Month! As always we thank the National Trust for Historic Preservation for its work to coordinate and promote these important topics all over the country.
This is a chance for us to focus on what is essential for our communities to understand preservation and how it can serve to help protect the rich stories and environment that surrounds us. The future benefits when it integrates with what came before, rather than simply removing it. We are excited to share some of our insights as well as learn from others all over the country working to advocate for historic places.
Below our new Board President Brian Curran shares some words with you about what the month means to us and some of the activities we are planning to celebrate it. We hope you can join us this month and beyond to keep Hollywood and its rich story alive and well for many years to come.
Hollywood Heritage Celebrates Preservation Month
Dear Members, Supporters and Friends,
Since 1973 each May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation kicks off National Preservation Month, a month of celebrating America’s historic places. This year Hollywood Heritage joins the Trust to celebrate Preservation Month and its stated intention to “tell the full American Story” and offer ways to discover and save places that showcase the depth and diversity of our nation’s history.
We believe that Hollywood is among those places through which the full American story is told. Few places in our country have captured the nation’s imagination quite like Hollywood. Its historical geography is a crossroads of indigenous tribes, Mexican Ranchos, Midwestern idealists, and Jewish filmmakers. It is a place that was settled and built by American migrants as well as immigrants and artists from every continent. The resulting creative atmosphere in Hollywood mixed with quintessential American entrepreneurship would nurture the early motion picture business, enabling it to become one of the nation’s greatest industries and a cultural force of international significance. Even today Hollywood remains a destination for strivers with a dream, a place of pilgrimage for tourists and a community of professionals, workers, and free spirits. It is also a place where history is made with Los Angeles’s first LGBT Pride Parade and more recently as the site of one of the nation’s largest marches in support of Black Lives Matter.
Hollywood, as well as being culturally and historically significant is also rich in architectural treasures. Along its streets and boulevards is the second-largest concentration of historic buildings in Los Angeles outside of downtown. This collection of historic resources encompasses tracts of craftsman bungalows, neighborhoods of Mediterranean villas and storybook cottages as well as majestic and exotic theaters, art deco delights, and modern masterpieces. Hollywood’s beating heart, however, is the Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment National Historic District, and its famous Walk of Fame, lined with Hollywood stars of the past and present.
Preservation Month 2021 arrives at a time when Hollywood Boulevard, a bit battered and bruised, is finally awakening from its pandemic slumber. No time could be better to shine a spotlight on its great and glamorous past, its troubled present and uncertain future. Hollywood Heritage invites you to join us in celebrating Hollywood as our treasured place, one that tells a unique but all-embracing American story through its history and historic buildings, a place you help protect through your generous support of Hollywood Heritage.
Throughout May learn more about the history and architecture of Hollywood virtually through our websites and social media. We are preparing a host of images, essays, blog posts, and online events for you to join the celebration. Follow our Instagram posts @ hollywood_heritage, and our Facebook pages Hollywood Heritage and Preserving Hollywood’s Heritage, on Twitter @HWDHeritage, and finally on our main web page at https://www.hollywoodheritage.org and that of our Preservation Resource Center https://www.hhprc.org. Come celebrate and experience Hollywood as it has never been seen before.
Looking forward to seeing you all back at the Barn this summer!
Best wishes!
Brian Curran
President, Hollywood Heritage
