Bob Hope Patriotic Hall

Bob Hope Patriotic Hall. . , Veterans Hideaway, Movie Set - Memorial Did It All , Patriotic Hall stands as a monument of civic appreciation to veterans from the Civil War to the Iraqi War, and to veterans of wars yet unfought. , It is where presidents and generals came to address the faithful, a temporary hotel and nightspot for servicemen, and a repository for wartime memories. , This is the third Patriotic Hall on the site. In 1886, the Grand Army of the Republic - an influential Civil War veterans' organization - built a three-story Victorian building on a 30-acre bean field. , As the veteran population swelled, the Victorian house came down, and in 1907 a larger building went up. Finally, as veterans returned from World War I, former governor Henry Tifft Gage, who owned the land around the hall, deeded it for $10 to Los Angeles County in 1921. The present ten-story, neo-Italian Renaissance building - costing $800,000 of county taxpayers money - opened in 1926. , The Allied Architects Association pledged itself - as it said in a letter to the city's mayor - to the "better expression of the art of architecture in our public structures at a minimum cost." The nearly three dozen members of this high-minded civic organization were responsible for designing a vast number of Los Angeles' most striking public buildings of the 1920s. , This renaissance of public-spirited design was part of a larger movement called "The City Beautiful," a belief among the nation's civic leaders that beautiful public buildings would elevate the tone and spirit of citizenship among the population. Patriotic Hall is among the buildings that were designed under this program. , Patriots, Police, and High-Proof Drinks , From its new headquarters, American Legion Post 8 lobbied for veterans and published a patriotic bulletin. In time, the bulletin would hammer away at those it considered unpatriotic, like Hollywood liberals of the McCarthy era. , In 1934 the room on the second floor became a clubhouse as veterans-turned-police officers founded Los Angeles Police Post 381. , The parties ended in World War II when the basement became a 400-bed haven for GIs who couldn't find hotel rooms in a city thronged with soldiers and wartime workers. Hollywood stars like the "Road" movies trio of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour sometimes performed in the main auditorium. , From U.S. Highway 6 To G.A.R. , It's hardly the route of Sherman's March to the Sea, but Figueroa Street carries a grand name - the "Grand Army of the Republic Highway." The street on which Patriotic Hall was built is part of what used to be U.S. Highway 6, which stretched from San Pedro to Provincetown, Mass. In 1942, the last remaining members of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization formed in 1866 to assist wounded and sick Civil War veterans, petitioned states across the nation to name the highway after the group. The states agreed. , As returning World War II veterans began displacing World War I vets in leadership positions, frustrated older vets retaliated by secreting their wartime memorabilia behind a secret panel. It went undiscovered for decades. , For a time, the building took the overflow from busy county courtrooms, but in 1950, another sort of court gathered in the Lincoln Room. Here, movie studio moguls - including veterans of the Army Signal Corps motion picture division - quietly assembled their own list of suspected Communists and sympathizers in Hollywood. , Movies figured differently in the Hall's later years. Many films feature scenes shot in the Hall, among them "Stand And Deliver," "Flashdance" and the comedy "The Wedding Planner." , Many rooms bear the names of figures who visited over the century: presidents from William Howard Taft to Dwight Eisenhower, Generals Jimmy Doolittle, Omar Bradley and Douglas MacArthur, and Admiral Chester Nimitz. , Among the many military artifacts in Patriotic Hall's collection is a uniform once worn by Gen. George S. Patton, a collection of battle-frayed mementos, and artifacts of the roles that Los Angeles' men and women played in the nation's wars. , In 2004, Patriotic Hall was renamed Bob Hope Patriotic Hall, for the late comedian whose war-zone tours brought welcome laughter to military men and women throughout the 20th century.