A stay at L.A.’s American Hotel is a perfect stand-in for the history of Downtown L.A.’s vibrant, ever-evolving Arts District
stay at L.A.’s American Hotel is a perfect stand-in for the history of Downtown L.A.’s vibrant, ever-evolving Arts District—from today’s shiny veneers to yesterday’s gritty neighborhood home for
The Secret History of Los Angeles' Most Rebellious Hotel
Arts District
The modern day American is a thriving mainstay of the Downtown Arts District serving as a budget hotel catering to creatives, urban explorers, and shoe-string travelers. However, its roots trace back to the early 1900s where decade after decade, generations of the hotel’s residents and artists would weave its rich history.
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The end of prohibition signaled a return to the hotel’s status as a nightlife spot, when in 1933, famed bootlegger Tony Panzich opened Tony’s Café on the ground floor. For ten years diners could enjoy lobster and frog legs alongside $1 bottles of wine “ensconced in curtained booths” where patrons could “cuss and discuss freely,” according to Westway.
The hotel was built by local businessman William H. Avery in 1905. Offended by racist rules denying Black Americans hotel accommodations, Avery set out to build first-class lodging in the Arts District for people of color. He chose the area—at the time an area of factories, rail yards and Black family homes—for his four-story hotel, “The Canadian.” The opening party was a who’s who of Black society.
Still, the hotel was never meant to be segregated—a radical act in turn-of-the-century L.A. Such was the case that The Los Angeles Times reported that, “The hotel will not draw the color line ... and white guests will not be turned away,” making it one of only a few places where Black and white Angelenos could enjoy themselves together. That freedom also made it a target.
The hotel started as a respectable home base for professional Black people, like the many Pullman Porters making cross-country train journeys. It was such a place of law-and-order that its first manager was the LAPD’s second Black police officer, Berry R. Randolph. Despite that, it quickly became known as a rough and tumble spot for gambling and partying—a reputation cemented when the infamous “King of the Underworld” George Brown became the hotel’s new manager. He opened the jazz club The Golden West Café, in 1913, which, according to the California Eagle, set “the standard of entertaining newspaper and other public-spirited people in a manner long remembered and cherished by them.”
Cherished or not, the hotel’s integrated spirit continued to draw negative attention, decried as a place where Black and white patrons could dance together. In 1914, the Golden West was closed by police, officially making it an outlaw.
The 1920s saw the Arts District change from a mostly Black neighborhood to a mostly Japanese-American one, and the hotel followed suit. Now the American Hotel, local Japanese American Kintaro Asano stepped in as the manager, providing affordable housing for Japanese immigrants while Genjiro Nakamura ran the hotel’s corner grocery store.
The secretive nightlife spot among “factory chimneys” met its end during WWII, where the forcible internment of Japanese Americans emptied nearby Little Tokyo, and with it many of The American’s guests. The Arts District faded as trainyards closed and factories moved, and the American Hotel became a transient hotel predominantly for single men.
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The neighborhood’s hardened reputation (and low rents), attracted Alfonso Vasquez, who opened Al’s Bar in 1973. In 1979, downtown legend Marc Kreisel bought the bar, hoping to create “a place where artists could get together and socialize.” Initially imagined as a trucker bar, it quickly became a hangout for the young and hungry artists living in the American’s bare bones, $100-a-month artist studios.
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A
Words by HADLEY MEARES
Photography by ANNIE GREGORY
boundary breakers, artistic rebels, punk visionaries, and rock and roll legends.
The Start of an American Story
A Golden Era
Hungry Artists and Affordable Rent
The 80s and Beyond
For the next three decades, the American Hotel housed curators like Terry Ellsworth and artists like Jett Jackson and hosted bands including Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Los Lobos, Social Distortion, Dwight Yoakam, the Misfits, and Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs at Al’s Bar.
While the bar was open, a weekly “No Talent Night” gave some of L.A.’s rawest punks and poets a place to hone their skills. Artists turned their car interiors into gallery walls while the Under the Influence graffiti crew took over the parking lot in the back. Legendary muralists and street artists continue to put up provocative work in the space, including La Abuelita, an iconic mural of Navajo blanket weaver Martha Gorman Schultz on the back of the hotel, done by UTI crew members El Mac, Augustine Kofie and Joseph ‘Nuke’ Montalvo. In 2017, artist Kent Twitchell painted a towering 30-foot mural of L.A.’s own Ed Ruscha, one of pop-art’s most beloved artists, on the side of the hotel.
The American Today
The creative crowd triggered massive changes to the Arts District, making it first more desirable and then more mainstream. Al’s Bar closed in 2001 and the American Hotel cleaned up its reputation.
It may no longer serve as a den to wild and inventive artists, but the American Hotel is still a home for creativity. And it can feed it as well—the Pie Hole has kept the confrontational spirit, stuffing the hotel and the neighborhood with personal pies since 2011. If you can’t make it to the hotel, you can taste a bit of the boundary-breaking via DoorDash, ordering up a Cereal Killer pie or Handslam Empienada.
today’s shiny veneers to yesterday’s gritty neighborhood home for boundary breakers, artistic rebels, punk visionaries, and rock and roll legends.
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