NBC Radio City West…Now And Then
In 1938, construction began on NBC’s west coast showplace at Sunset and Vine Streets in Hollywood. A scant twenty six years later, it was torn down and replaced by a Home Savings bank. It’s now a Chase bank.
Taking it’s cue from homebase at Radio City in New York, it was named NBC Radio City West, but in actuality, the entire two block area around it was in itself “radio city”. On the other side of Vine Street and less than a block up was ABC and a block away, on the same side of the Sunset was CBS Columbia Square.
Thanks to Glenn Mack for sharing the present day photos and there is more detail on the photos, so be sure and click through them. By the way, the building was a beautiful pale green. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
That bank building pissed me off, every time I drove past it for 35 years.
Hollywood nowadays is an overbuilt ugly mess…
Haha I remember when I was in Hollywood I was watching Steve Martin in the Jerk and and two hours later I was smoking a joint with a street person while sitting in the very spot Steve Martin sat in…..
Twice in my career I’ve worked on that corner. Back in 1981, the tall building with the giant signage was the original location for CNN Los Angeles. It occupied the 16th and 17th floors. I was one of the 2 editors that CNN employed west of Chicago. There were also 2 camera crews (2 man bands), 2 assignment editors, 4 reporters and the bureau chief. That was the full extent of CNN in the western U.S. They later moved a quarter mile west on Sunset Blvd. to the current location at Sunset and Caheunga. I left CNN in 1982 to work at NBC in Burbank. At that time, the Chase bank was Home Federal Savings.
30 years later, in 2011, I was back at Sunset and Vine, editing for a production company in the building next door to the Chase bank (it’s the one in the picture with the rooftop parking). Needless to say, the area was completely different. Gone were the sleazy “adult” entertainment businesses and theaters, replaced by overpriced restaurants, bars and tourist shopping meccas.
I understand Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters has or had their archives in the basement of the bank building.
that’s where Les Paulus, met Bing Crosby, for the first time, by accident. thank goodness someone left a door ‘unlocked’, and he stumbled in…. we’d still be recording in ‘mono’!
A travesty to Radio History!!
Would anyone remember the phone number at Sunset and Vine?