Redone in the Spanish Revival Style, it featured wrought iron grills, rafters of oak and frescos recounting the story of Don Quixote. Architecture firm Morgan, Walls & Clements overhauled the space while McBean and Company completed the tile work. In July 1927, the Pig moved into an old soda fountain next to Sid Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, which had opened five years prior.
A multitude of high-end stores and five and dimes with plenty of places to eat and socialize," says Hollywood historian Gregory Paul Williams, author of The Story of Hollywood.
"Hollywood was originally an elegant shopping district. In 1927, a new Pig 'N' Whistle opened on Hollywood Blvd. The Pig 'N' Whistle also splashed its storybook theme on all sorts of merch, including scenic postcards, one of which read, "That piping dancing little Pig with the jolly, come hither smile has all sorts of good things for your refreshment and entertainment." Kids could order combos like the "Old Mother Hubbard," which included a peanut butter sandwich, apple sauce and Ovaltine. They also introduced a relatively new novelty, children's menus that doubled as coloring books or could be made into masks.
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The chain worked hard to court parents who were shopping with their children or catching a movie matinee. According to the Los Angeles Times, the restaurants featured more than a dozen sundaes including the tango sundae, the Peter Pan and the automobile sundae ( with wafers serving as tires). Eventually, you could find outposts inside the Alexandra Hotel, the Biltmore and the Fine Arts Building. Its dancing pig mascot came to represent a uniquely American eatery, a place where capitalism and convenience met whimsy and kitsch.Īs Gelakoska notes, new Pig 'N' Whistles opened near hotels, department stores and theaters including the famous Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A. With the help of pioneering Dutch immigrant Sidney Hoedemaker, who later founded the chain Hody's, Pig 'N' Whistle quickly opened new outposts in large cities up and down the West Coast. It billed itself as a "High Class Candy and Luncheon Place" with elegant interiors, comfort foods such as chicken pot pie, and candy counters and soda fountains for the kiddos. "The origin of the name is traced back to English taverns where the Anglo-Saxon 'Piggen' (Pig in the diminutive) was a vessel for milk or ale, and the 'Wassail'… meant 'Be in Health,' " Veronica Gelakoska writes in the definitive 2010 book, Pig 'N' Whistle. Gage opened the first Pig 'N' Whistle at 226 South Broadway, next to L.A.'s third City Hall. In 1908, former San Francisco hotel manager John H. (Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library Collection)īefore its closure, the Pig 'N' Whistle was the last restaurant standing in what was once a mighty West Coast chain. Tempo (part of his expanding Tempo Cantina empire) in the building, which is owned by Fulcor Investment. The Pig 'N' Whistle's famous neon sign had already been removed by restauranter Jorge Cueva, who plans to open Mr. Unfortunately, it may have been too late. On October 25, 2021, the city of Los Angeles issued a stop work order on the building, according to Alison Martino, a local historian who runs Vintage Los Angeles and is often the first to know about historic happenings in L.A. After it closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new tenant came in to revamp the space… but radically altered both the exterior and interior of the space, which had been designed like an old English pub. How many restaurants can you say that about? It expanded into a major West Coast chain that eventually died out, leaving only one outpost, at 6714 Hollywood Blvd. For local historians and preservationists, it was a betrayal.Īfter opening in 1927, the Hollywood outpost of the playful Pig 'N' Whistle became equally popular with Golden Age movie stars and tourist families from Omaha. "They took down the two little pigs playing the whistles that were on the exterior and they put in skulls."įor some Angelenos, that may seem like a minor detail.
"I looked inside, and it's hard to see just through windows, but it looked like they were gutting it," she says of the Pig 'N' Whistle. Historian April Clemmer, leader of the popular Old Hollywood Walking Tour, first noticed the changes in late July, 2021.
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