A historic building at the Hollywood Center Motel that appeared in “L.A. Confidential” and was 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 the boarded-up, two-story Craftsman-style house engulfed in flames. Seventy firefighters extinguished the blaze in an hour and 12 minutes, according to an LAFD press release.
A 42-year-old man escaped from the second story and was transported to a hospital in stable condition with a minor injury. No firefighters were injured. The LAFD later demolished the building, citing public safety issues and its uninhabitable condition.
The timing proved devastating for preservationists. Last month, the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission voted to consider the 120-year-old structure as a potential historic-cultural monument. A site visit had been scheduled for this week.
“It’s a gut punch for Hollywood preservation,” Brian Curran, the local historian who submitted the landmark application, told the Los Angeles Times.
The building, which dates back to 1905, had appeared in films including “L.A. Confidential” and “The Rockford Files” and was frequented by Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse.
Curran, co-chair of Hollywood Heritage’s Preservation Committee, said the building had been left vacant and became a “magnet for transients.” Two smaller fires had occurred at the house on Sept. 15 and Oct. 19.
“The building could readily have been painted and preserved to serve in an adaptive re-use capacity as a gem in the community,” the Hollywood Heritage Museum stated in a Jan. 5 social media post. “By allowing its decay and neglect we again see rare historic buildings lost which were eminently restorable.”
The motel operated until 2018 and was vacated in late 2024 following a foreclosure, Curran said.
Athena Novak, a representative for owner Andranik Sogoyan, told the Times that transients had been a persistent problem since 2024.
“The owner, of course, was reinforcing it the best he could,” Novak said. “He had a maintenance man going there all the time. The maintenance man was attacked a few times with weapons.”