Wich Stand was a '50s-style coffee shop restaurant and diner in Los Angeles, California, featuring a tilting blue roof and 35-foot spire (11 m), designed by architect Eldon Davis.[1]
| Wich Stand | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Googie architecture |
| Town or city | Los Angeles |
| Completed | 1957 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Eldon Davis |
The Wich Stand had two locations in the Los Angeles area. One of the buildings still exists at the intersection of Slauson Avenue and Overhill Drive in View Park-Windsor Hills, an unincorporated affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles County near City of Inglewood that is encircled. It was known for its dart neon sign.
A food critic said its "plunging dart of a sign keeps it from spinning off into space," and it's a surviving preserved examples of Googie architecture, according to The Los Angeles Times.[2][3]
The other was located within City of Los Angeles proper at the Northwest corner of Figueroa Street and Florence Avenue (as listed on menu and matchbook cover), which preceded the one "on the hill."
The Beach Boys
editThe Beach Boys lived in the area and wrote an unreleased song called "Wich Stand".[4] The coffee shop also inspired another Beach Boys song, "Root Beer (Chug-a-Lug)", about "Cruisin' the A," which was driving the five miles between the A & W on Hawthorne Boulevard and the Wich Stand on Slauson.[5]
Simply Wholesome
edit| Simply Wholesome | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Restaurant information | |
| Established | 1995 |
| Food type | Health food |
| Street address | 4508 W. Slauson Avenue |
| City | Los Angeles |
| County | Los Angeles |
| State | California |
| Country | United States |
| Other information |
|
| Website | |
The Slauson Avenue location opened in 1957. It fell upon hard times in the early 1980s and was vandalized. The floors and ceilings were gutted after the diner closed in 1988. In 1989 it was declared a historic landmark by the Los Angeles County. In 1995 the building was completely refurbished and reopened as Simply Wholesome vegan restaurant and health food store.[6]
See also
edit- Beach Boys Historic Landmark, childhood home location in Hawthorne
References
edit- ^ "OBIT> ELDON DAVIS, 1917-2011". The Architect's Newspaper. 5 November 2011.
- ^ Steve Harvey Coffee Shop Modern' Architecture Googie-History Closing the Menu on a 1950s Style June 9, 1986 Page: 1 Los Angeles Times (partial preview) [1][dead link]
- ^ Alan Hess (2004). Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture. Chronicle Books. p. 97. ISBN 9780811842723. Retrieved 24 September 2015.
- ^ "Sometimes Wilson would cruise several miles north to the Wich Stand at Slauson Ave and Overhill Drive, where the parking lot would hold a hundred cars from all over the South Bay, which is what locals call the area between South Central and the bottom half of Santa Monica Bay. He might have immortalized the destination drive-in in a 1964 recording, "The Wich Stand," but the track went unreleased. With a decorative spire poking through the slanted roof, buttressed by Swiss cheese struts, the Wich Stand looked like Southern California itself -- open, airy, offbeat and futuristic. Today the building is painted an unlikely forest green and houses a health food restaurant, Simply Wholesome, that caters to the large African American community in the neighborhood. The spacious parking lot in the rear, once packed with hot rods and surf wagons, stands nearly empty. More than the neighborhood has changed in South Central Los Angeles. over the past 45 years." Joel Selvin For the Beach Boys, fun, fun, fun began in humble Hawthorne May 31, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle
- ^ James B. Murphy (2015). Becoming the Beach Boys, 1961-1963. McFarland. pp. 215–216. ISBN 9780786473656. Retrieved 24 September 2015.
- ^ Chastang, Carol (Apr 9, 1995). "Windsor Hills, Happy Days to Health Food for This Landmark Renovation: A '50s-style coffee shop, the Wich Stand, gets new life as a Simply Wholesome store". Los Angeles Times. p. 8. Retrieved 2015-01-08.