I think this guy owns my building too, the Hanmi Bank on Wilshire & Hobart. Yes, the Wilshire Center is booming, I walk on Wilshire all the time, and I see some upscale and diverse individuals. It's just north of Wilshire that needs to get fixed up...but I guess that's just how Ktown is....

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the Equitable building is close to the site of the original Brown Derby, but not actually on the site. I've always assumed that the horrid strip mall across the street from the Ambassador (which includes the remnants of the Brown Derby on the second floor) -- the "Brown Derby Plaza," in a slight nod to history -- is actually where the restaurant once stood...

Mike, you are partly right. Brown Derby Plaza, the ugly mini-mall on the same block as the Gaylord Hotel, was built on the site of the last Brown Derby, a copy of the original. The first Derby had been one block west. After it moved, bungalows for the Chapman Park Hotel were built on that block of Wilshire. They were torn down in the late 60s for Equitable Tower. Bonus round for L.A. trivia fiends: there was a third Brown Derby on that stretch of Wilshire for about a year in the 1930s that later became an equally famous L.A. culinary landmark. It was seen in Sunset Blvd. Anyone know where?

Ah, Kevin, your memory is just too damn good.
When I was in junior high in the late 1950s, my sort-of girlfriend's family and I were put on Al Jarvis' TV dance show (if anybody remembers the West Coast Dick Clark) and Al took us all out afterward to the Brown Derby, my eyes so a-goggle with excitement I damn near fainted. And now I don't even know what building I was in.

Thanks, but it's book research, not memory. I never set foot in any of the Wilshire Derbys. The only one where I ever ate was on Vine in Hollywood.

i thought the Brown Derby on Hollywood & Vine(Northwest corner) WAS the first Derby even though it wasn't shaped like a hat...Clark Gable proposed to Lombard there & all that stuff-& that burned up in the late 1950s?

Nah, according to the Brown Derby company's own history and what I've found, the Vine Street Derby opened on Valentine's Day in 1929. The original at 3427 Wilshire opened in 1926. The Hollywood dining room was at 1628 Vine (south of Hollywood Blvd. on the east side, not the NW corner) and didn't burn down in the '50s. It stood for decades after that. But you're right, Vine never had the famous hat. The Hollywood dining room was intended as the upscale iteration of the Brown Derby concept, with fine cuisine instead of the chili, burgers and dogs sold at the Wilshire cafe. (The Cobb Salad went on the menu at both after being "invented" in the kitchen of the Wilshire cafe).

In 1931, yet another Derby opened at Wilshire and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Thanks for the info, Kevin, definitely looking forward to your book. The combo Louise's/The Derby building in Los Feliz was home to another Brown Derby, yes?

Will the Wilshire book be published?

As for hot, it's all relative. Wilshire was once *the* place for the insurance and banking industry. That dried up. Then Riots chased out a lot. All the big names are gone, save Farmers and they're out beyond the gritty part. When a Fortune 500 client makes a home on Wilshire, then we'll see.

A few unoccupied residential projects and $1/sq-ft offices does not a hot boulevard make. Medium-warm, maybe.

Good points. Wilshire Center is nothing like it was in the 60s and 70s when Fortune 500 companies wanted to make their headquarters there, and many did. If it's hot now, it's only in a relative sense, compared to the dead days after the riot. The real estate has buyers and developers seem pretty hungry to build housing on Wilshire there, on the Miracle Mile and in Beverly Hills.