The Hollywood Premiere Motel may not have hosted A-listers, but the mid-century roadside inn crowned with an eye-catching neon sign is getting some high-profile attention.
The 42-room motel at 5333 Hollywood Blvd. has won historic-cultural monument status from the Los Angeles City Council, making it the city's only stand-alone motel to receive this type of historic designation.
The Premiere’s new status aims to ensure its throwback exterior will survive, imposing a strict review of any proposed alterations or demolition. It comes as more of Southern California's aging motels are renovated without erasing their mid-century character, a trend that provides an added wrinkle for some commercial property owners, investors and developers.
The 26,000-square-foot Hollywood Premiere motel was built in 1960 at the height of California’s car culture boom, exemplifying how postwar travel architecture was tailored to the freeway age — with parking lots, pools visible from the road, and a sign bright enough to stop a speeding Buick.
One reason for preservation is its rare intact architectural integrity, including its original sign, layout and structural details. City planning staff note also that the property's strongest significance is in its role in Hollywood’s economic transition from studio back lot to tourism hub in the 1960s. And the design speaks to a shift in how Americans traveled, and where they wanted to sleep along the way.
The economy motel "embodies the rare remaining example of a 1960s motel in Hollywood,” said historic preservationist James Dastoli, who nominated the property for the historic designation, during a City Planning Commission hearing this year.
Near Hollywood studios
The Hollywood Premiere descends from a lineage of roadside architecture that began in the 1920s, when travelers stayed in auto camps offering cabin-style lodging with car access. The motel's later design accommodated motorists lured west by Route 66 and a newly built freeway system.
The motel sits just east of the 101 freeway, blocks from the Walk of Fame and former Hollywood studios. Built in a U-shape around a central parking lot, it’s crowned by the towering neon motel sign with bubbly, space-age letters, a hallmark of the Googie style — a design born from the atomic age and tailored for the roadside — popular in Southern California’s postwar roadside culture.
L.B. Brown & Associates was the original developer, and architect Joyce Miller headed design. Features included space for a coffee shop, a pool shaded by perforated concrete screens, and floating staircases — all elements that largely remain. A few signs were added or replaced, and two palm trees were removed, but the bones of the building remain as they were six decades ago.
Miller was the architect during an era when few women were allowed to lead design projects, according to research submitted with the designation. She’s credited with just a handful of buildings in the Hollywood area, and the motel remains her most intact — and flamboyant — work, city officials note in the application.
While "the incredible neon sign is something anyone in East Hollywood would recognize," Dastoli said, "the entire building has mid-century flourishes and touches that make it significant."
The motel has made more movie cameos than some working actors, flashing its neon sign and retro silhouette in films like "Training Day," "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Midnight Run," where it stood in as the quintessential sun-bleached Los Angeles cheap place to stay.
Development pressure
City preservation officials describe the building's massive motel sign as “exuberant” in a manner that doesn’t just advertise the motel. It also defines the entire corner and is an important source of advertising, coaxing tired travelers with promises of a pool, TV and air conditioning.
Chain hotels and newer developments have swallowed a number of Hollywood Boulevard’s mid-century motels, replacing them with denser and taller lodging options. The designation comes as the neighborhood faces further pressure to redevelop aging properties for housing or mixed use, Dastoli said.
In Long Beach, Paloma Communities and architecture and design firm Omgivning recently reopened the 1962 City Center Motel after a renovation that kept its original footprint but updated finishes, landscaping and amenities, showing how vintage motels can be refreshed while retaining their charm.
And a few blocks east, the Hollywood Downtowner Motel, built in 1956 at 5601 Hollywood Blvd., is set to be converted into affordable housing while maintaining most of the property's exterior features.
Hollywood’s hotel market is known for luxury, but the Hollywood Premiere Motel sits at the opposite end of that spectrum. Room rates for the motel average $100 per night, while average daily rates in the area hover around $340. Older, economy-tier properties like the Premiere face steeper headwinds from deferred maintenance, softening leisure demand and rising operating costs, according to CoStar research.
Still, major events for the area, including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics, are expected to drive a surge in visitation. With hotel construction at a five-year low and deal volume well below average, Hollywood’s hospitality landscape is in a holding pattern as the market awaits demand to catch up.