Car Showrooms & Dealerships - Concessionnaires automobiles - 1950s - 1960s

Hollywood, 1942. Colorized photo.

The Century Motorcycles building originally housed a car dealership. It was built in 1927. Century Motorcycles has been here since 1962

The Casa de Cadillac showroom was designed by Randall Duell. It housed Don Lee Cadillac when it was built in 1949. The name was changed and the signs were changed by 1959 and probably earlier than that

The former Ray Vines Chrysler dealership's buildings -- prominent local examples of Googie-style architecture at the NW corner of Willow St./Lakewood Blvd. -- have re-emerged as a mini-mall and carwash...with their Googie architecture proudly and prominently displayed.



Located south of the 405 underpass (across the freeway from Long Beach Airport), the mini-mall is dubbed "LBG" -- Long Beach Gateway -- a play on Long Beach Airport's code LGB.

"Googie" style architecture proliferated in southern CA from the post-WWII 40's into the mid-60s and featured sweeping roofs, geometric shapes, large glass panes and designs symbolizing motion and the "space age."




Architect Paul B. Clayton's original soaring double-winged roof and front glass exterior have been completely rebuilt and now serve as the anchor for several new store fronts. On the side of the Googie structure is a large photo-mural of the building as the former Ray Vines Chrysler/R.O. Gould Chrysler/Plymouth dealership.

Adjacent to the original structure is a newly built carwash featuring a soaring "single wing" roof that pays tribute to Clayton's original design.




The repurposed Googie-style building is across Lakewood Blvd. from another iconic building: the round Long Beach Holiday Inn Tower. It's also kitty-corner to the 24-hour Spire's diner.

Clayton's most famous structure was Johnie's Broiler on Firestone Blvd. in Downey, completed in 1958, closed in 2001, converted into a car dealership until 2006 and (despite its eligibility for CA's Registry of Historical Resources) demolished without a city permit on Jan. 7, 2007. Preservationists enlisted the help of the JKBBD restaurant group, the owners of Bob's Big Boy, which reconstructed the building from Clayton's original blueprints; it re-opened as a Bob's Big Boy Broiler in 2009.



Googie style architecture reportedly took its name from L.A.'s vanished Googies coffee shop (formerly at Sunset Blvd./Crescent Heights). Some remaining L.A. examples include Norm's on La Cienega Blvd. south of Melrose Ave. and Pann's on La Cienega at La Tijera Blvd.; Johnie's coffee shop on Wilshire at Fairfax is now closed.

The beautifully repurposed Long Beach LBG mini-mall is now a functioning local tribute to the Googie architecture of Paul Clayton...who died in February 2005 at the age of 91

http://www.lbreport.com/13mello/googopen.htm