I've written before about the restaurants that preceded the Cat & Fiddle on Sunset Blvd between Schrader and Las Palmas. It started life as the
Mary Helen Tea Room, then the Gourmet restaurant and the polynesian restaurant Mouling. While looking through a Chamber of Commerce publication from 1927, I recently found some great renderings of the building as it was being built.
The popular actor Fred Thomson (husband of screenwriter Frances Marion) was the driving force behind this building, which was being built next door to the (then) Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. According to the Los Angeles Times, Thomson's Spanish shopping court and patio building (seen below) was patterned after Santa Barbara's
De La Guerra Plaza.
