L.A.'s First Theme Mall. Photo: M. Imlay
Now an office building, Sunset Blvd.’s Crossroads of the World opened in 1936 as L.A.’s first themed shopping mall. (Many believe it’s America’s first such mall as well.)
The shipshape design was the brainchild of Robert V. Derrah, well known for his Streamline Moderne Coca Cola building across town on Central Avenue.
Here at Crossroads, a twirling globe crowns a mast-like spire. Inside the gates, a replica European village surrounds the ocean cruiser at the heart of the complex. In the background towers another architectural wonder, the bellfry of Hollywood’s Church of the Blessed Sacrament, built in 1928 on a parish site occupied by the Jesuit Order since 1904.
