Wave Staff Report
HOLLYWOOD — AIDS Healthcare Foundation has announced it will vigorously oppose a developer’s plans to destroy a building steeped in seven decades of Hollywood history to make way for a mixed-use luxury project near Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street.
The foundation also said it will file a formal nomination with the city of Los Angeles to designate the building as a historic-cultural monument.
The building is a two-story craftsman home at 6263 Leland Way built in 1911. Off Vine Restaurant has occupied the space for the past 34 years but closed permanently March 26. Starlet Beryl Wallace, who appeared in numerous Hollywood films and starred nightly in risqué revues at the nearby Earl Carroll Theater on Sunset Boulevard, lived in the home before it became Off Vine.
“Joni Mitchell famously sang, ‘they paved paradise to put up a parking lot.’ This is exactly what will happen to the Beryl Wallace home if the developer is permitted to tear it down,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “It will become the entrance to an underground parking lot for another luxury development that will do absolutely nothing to address Los Angeles’ affordable housing crisis.
“We will do everything we can to block the demolition of the Off Vine/Beryl Wallace home as we separately seek its designation as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.”
According to the foundation, Earl Carroll and Beryl Wallace were cultural institutions in Hollywood throughout the 1930s and ’40s, as well as professional and romantic partners. Carroll bought the Leland Way home for Wallace, and his Carroll Theater sported one of the most famous Hollywood landmarks: a 20-foot neon facial portrait of Wallace. The two died together in a Pennsylvania plane crash in June 1948.
Marilyn Wallace, a longtime AIDS Healthcare Foundation board member and Beryl’s younger sister, lived at the Leland Way home in her youth. The Wallace family owned the property until 2019.
