The only person more intimately acquainted with the nuances of Googie design than architect Eldon Davis might have been comic Lenny Bruce.
"Lenny instigated a fight at the original Googies restaurant on Sunset and Crescent Heights," said Daniel Paul of the Los Angeles Conservancy's Modern Committee. But the foe outsized Bruce, "and he threw Lenny right through the window."
Bruce might not have appreciated the wall-sized pane of glass at the time, but it was a defining feature of an architectural style that came to epitomize postwar American optimism, particularly in the Southland.
Davis, one of the most innovative and popular designers of the style named for the now-demolished restaurant, turned 90 last week, and to celebrate, members of the Conservancy's committee led an unofficial bus tour and progressive dinner around L.A. On the menu: seven Davis designs still in use.
To kick off the party, 40 or so of Davis' peers and younger Googie enthusiasts met at Norm's restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard for appetizers and to dish about the history of Googie. Davis, who still has the youthful gait of an artist inspired by rocket ships, designed the building in 1957 with many of Googie's hallmarks, including a radically vaulted roof, a room-length dining counter and an outsized, comet-shaped sign to beckon drivers from off the street.
"Oh God, Alan Hess is here," exclaimed ModCom's Chris Nichols, an editor for Los Angeles magazine and organizer of the party. Hess wrote "Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture," a survey of the style that, Nichols said, "completely changed my life."
With that, the crowd hopped the party bus and swung by the Lodge, a Beverly Hills steakhouse and the current incarnation of Davis' design for a long-gone Tiny Naylor's Drive-In.
"The new owners kept the canopy and diamonds outside," said Nichols, to murmurs of approval from the bus. "But they stuccoed over the back panels," a move booed by the party.
Bob's Big Boy, a sprawling, ranch-style diner on Wilshire Boulevard just east of the Miracle Mile, served the group burgers and giant mounds of French fries from its open kitchen, another Davis touch meant to engage diners in the exposed-beam structure around them.
"As long as you can see people working, you don't care if your food is late," said Victor Newlove, a Davis colleague in the firm of Armet Davis Newlove, who helped design the restaurant. "Everybody loves to see somebody cook."
