Image via GardenOfAllah.com
Former Location –
A fabled apartment/hotel that welcomed transient show business guests from 1935-1955. Many famous movie stars stayed here.
Joni Mitchell wrote about it in the classic song “Big Yellow Taxi” as a kind of metaphor for cultural changes.
“They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot”.
It was torn down in 1959 and is now a parking lot for a bank.
Garden of Allah
8152 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90046
I’m writing a series of novels set at the Garden of Allah and I recently learned that a friend of mine is one of Joni’s closest friends. So I asked him to ask her if she really did write that song about the Garden of Allah. She told him, no. She wrote it after she was in Hawaii and was horrified how they were paving over paradise (ie Hawaii) and building huge hotels and parking lots. Makes more sense now, huh?
Martin Turnbull
The Garden of Allah novels
http://www.MartinTurnbull.com
I hate that I have to pay to go through the parking lot when I want to see something its ugly I can’t even get through the McDonalds with my car why don’t we tear down the parking lot and put back the old hotel like Joni Mitchell song says ?
Nice to know. I thought it was in Yorkville, Toronto.
Guess it could be any where.
I once lived in that area.