A piece in Los Angeles Magazine this week asked whether the Alta Cienega Motel on North La Cienega Boulevard should get landmark status. Writer Zach Selwyn drove by the iconic shuttered property and started asking questions. It got us thinking the same.
If you’re not familiar with the story, Morrison lived at the Alta Cienega on and off from 1968 to 1970, during the recording of L.A. Woman. Room 32 became the Morrison Room. The connection was made world-famous by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman’s Morrison biography, No One Gets Out of Here Alive.
Fans have rented the room to channel his spirit, party like a rock star and leave behind poetry and tributes scribbled on the walls. The motel has been closed and listed for lease since at least 2021. There was no ceremony, never a plaque placed or any other formal recognition of his residence that we could find.
Which raised a question. What does West Hollywood actually protect — and what gets left out?
The Commission
The City adopted its Historic Preservation Ordinance in 1989. Since then it has designated dozens of historic and cultural resources, including several historic districts. West Hollywood’s ordinance does not require owner consent to designate a landmark — which makes it stronger than most. The Historic Preservation Commission recommends designations to the Planning Commission and City Council and maintains the local public register of cultural resources. It has seven members, all required to have demonstrated knowledge of or interest in historic preservation.
The 90-odd designations on the books lean toward architecture. Bungalow courts. Apartment buildings. Mid-century modern commercial properties.
The Alta Cienega is not among them.
The Commission meets the fourth Monday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Plummer Park Community Center, Room 6, at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. It has seven members; five appointed by individual council members, two appointed by the Council as a whole. Some of the properties designated: the Schindler House on Kings Road, the Plummer Park Great Hall and Fiesta Hall, and the Normandie Towers, a Tudor Revival cottage complex built in 1924 by the same crews that built sets at Charlie Chaplin’s studio.
What’s Missing
Across the street from the motel at 8512 Santa Monica Boulevard sits a building that once housed the Doors’ offices and recording studios. The men’s room on the lower floor served as the vocal booth where Morrison recorded “L.A. Woman.” That property isn’t designated either.
Barney’s Beanery has been on Santa Monica Boulevard since 1927. Morrison was a regular. Janis Joplin stopped there the night she died. Charles Bukowski came around. Quentin Tarantino reportedly wrote much of Pulp Fiction in one of the booths. Its designation status was not immediately clear.
The Whisky a Go Go received recognition as a Historic Rock and Roll Landmark from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. The honor came from Cleveland, not City Hall.
It wouldn’t be the first time a preservation push hit a wall. In 2017, the City Council pumped the brakes on a proposed Eastside Craftsman thematic district — a survey of early 20th-century homes bounded by Hampton, Norton, Genesee, and Gardner — after homeowners raised concerns about property rights. The Preservation Alliance supported it. The Council shelved it. Those houses still don’t have formal protection.
To receive local cultural resource designation in West Hollywood, a property has to meet at least one of several criteria established in the municipal code. Among them: the resource must exemplify or reflect special elements of the City’s aesthetic, architectural, cultural, economic, or social history and possess an integrity of design, location, materials, setting, workmanship, feeling, and association.
The Bing Crosby building at 9028 Sunset is a good example of how messy this can gets.
Crosby had his business in the building from 1936 until he died in 1977. His engineers perfected audiotape recording there in the late 1940s and invented videotape there as well. As WEHOville reported back on 2018, the state historical commission voted unanimously in 2018 to nominate it for the National Register.
The plan is now for the larger parcel (which includes 9028 Sunset and several adjacent addresses on Sunset and Harratt Street) to be developed as a 25-story residential tower with the 9034 Sunset Blvd. addeess. The West Hollywood Preservation Alliance submitted a letter into the public record ahead of a community meeting on the project, raising questions the City and developer have yet to fully answer. Local historic designation for the Crosby building was bypassed years ago when the project was a hotel. The WHPA wants to know whether that still stands now that it’s a residential project. They’re also asking whether the developer still plans to relocate the Crosby building on-site, as proposed in 2019, or whether that commitment has quietly disappeared.
A 1910 Craftsman home at 9027 Harratt Street, also part of the same parcel and previously flagged as potentially eligible for local designation, is in the same limbo. The original 2018 project documents called for its demolition. Whether that still applies to the current residential proposal has not been answered publicly.
The Alliance also noted the community meeting notice never mentioned a state-designated historic building was sitting on the site. They called it a transparency problem. Hard to argue otherwise.
The West Hollywood Preservation Alliance has also asked for more surveys of the City’s residential zones. They argue that historic properties are being irrevocably altered and torn down before anyone takes stock of them. The same argument could apply here. One can easily imagine the building being refurbished and restored to it’s glory days like in the postcard above.
In West Hollywood the reality is you can walk three blocks in any direction and find a building where something happened — you can’t put a plaque on all of it. But there’s a difference between being selective and being asleep. As Zach said, “we should preserve the Alta Cienega Motel and celebrate Jim Morrison’s legacy. If not, it will fade away into rock folklore like so many lost bars and buildings before it.”
Related Coverage
WeHo’s Bing Crosby Building Nominated for National Historic Register
Developer Behind Major WeHo Projects Arrested on Federal Bribery Charges
This is ridiculous trying to save this Hotel building. This was a drug den probably since Morrison entered here being completely trashed till it closed. Why didn’t you save the San Vicente Inn? Same old same old what gives here. Across the street is understandable as a yes.
Placing a plaque identifying what took place at that location would be sufficient enough. It would be ridiculous to try and save every single building that some famous person stayed in for a bit… especially this little crap motel. I think the city would be much better off if this property got redeveloped.
Rumor was the city purchased Alta Cienega awhile back, with the intent of converting it to affordable housing, while ostensibly preserving the Jim Morrison room- the one over the driveway- as a shrine. I still think this makes the most sense.
A big difference between George Washington and Jim Morrison. No more flea bags necessary
Just because one famous person stayed somewhere shouldnt make it a historically designated property although I think its unwise would be great if the city can require a plaque placed on that site for any future projects so we don’t completely lose the history of what happened in certain places. But for some of these clubs that hosted dozens of famous performers and were integral to developing whole scenes of music, i would love to see some designation that could help protect them and if the properties were to be developed could force the developers to figure out ways to… Read more »
No. It’s a POS.
I stayed in the Jim Morrison room one sordid night, and it’s a pig sty. The whole complex should be razed.
I agree.