Historic Hollywood building from ‘LA Confidential’ destroyed by fire

A historic Hollywood Center motel that was featured in “LA Confidential” and frequented by Neil Young was destroyed by fire early Sunday morning.

The Los Angeles Fire Department responded to the fire on Sunset Boulevard at 4:30 a.m. to find a boarded-up, two-story Craftsman-style home engulfed in flames. Seventy firefighters extinguished the fire in one hour and 12 minutes, according to the LAFD press release.

A 42-year-old man escaped from the second floor and was taken to hospital in stable condition with minor injuries. No firefighters were injured. The LAFD later demolished the building, citing public safety concerns and its uninhabitable condition.

The timing proved disastrous for preservationists. The city’s cultural heritage commission voted last month to consider the 120-year-old building as a potential historical-cultural monument. A site visit was scheduled for this week.

“It’s a big blow to Hollywood preservation,” said Brian Curran, a local historian who filed the landmark petition. Los Angeles Times.

The building, which dates back to 1905, has been featured in movies like “LA Confidential” and “The Rockford Files” and was frequented by Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse.

Curran, co-chairman of the Hollywood Heritage Preservation Committee, said the building remained vacant and became “a magnet for transients.” Two smaller fires broke out in the house on September 15 and October 19.

“The building could easily have been painted and preserved to serve as a jewel in the adaptive reuse community,” the Hollywood Heritage Museum said in a Jan. 5 social media post. “When we allow it to decay and neglect, we once again see lost precious historic buildings that were extraordinarily restorable.”

The motel operated until 2018 and was vacant at the end of 2024 after foreclosure, Curran said.

Athena Novak, a deputy to owner Andranik Sogoyan, told the Times that transients have been an ongoing problem since 2024.

“Of course, the owner strengthened it as best he could,” said Novák. “The whole time there was a maintenance worker there. The maintenance worker was attacked with weapons several times.”