LA honors the Hollywood Sign with 2023 Preservation Award

What is more iconic about Los Angeles than the Hollywood Signs? So much so that this past July it won the 2023 Preservation Award by the Los Angeles Conservancy, which recognized the sign’s historic preservation.

Built 100 years ago as “Hollywoodland,” it was originally designed to be nothing more than a temporary billboard for the Hollywoodland real estate development at the end of Beachwood Canyon in LA. Through the years, the original sign began to experience a gradual decline. When in 1947, LA's Recreation and Parks Commission—the City of Los Angeles has owned the sign since 1944—advocated tearing it down, residents protested. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce then pitched in and offered to finance the first preservation efforts of the letter “H,” provided the last four letters “LAND” were removed.

Fast forward through further periods of neglect, the turbulent decades of the 1960s and 70s, wind, rain, sun, termites, and vandalism, the sign continued to deteriorate but became such an iconic presence in the Hollywood Hills, famous among visitros and celebrities alike. It was designated a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1973.

The Hollywood Trust was also established in 1978 to maintain, repair and provide capital improvements to the Hollywood Sign, with a larger mission of helping to preserve Hollywood’s standing as the worldwide center of motion pictures and cinema arts. The most recent clean-up and preservation efforts are from 2021-2022.

The Los Angeles Conservancy's annual Preservation Awards—established in 1982—honor excellence in historic preservation through the City and its neighborhoods. Among this year's winners, in addition to the Hollywood Sign: the Edinburgh Bungalow Court (Chair Award), All Seasons Brewing Co., Carthay Historic Neighborhood District, the Downtown L.A. Proper Hotel, the First Congregational Church of Long Beach, the Long Beach Suburbanization and Race Historic Context Statement, and the Tail O' the Pup.

https://www.laconservancy.org/tours-events/preservation-awards/