A brief history of Hollywood
Hollywood was a farming town before it was a film town. Within a few decades it went from ranch land and a streetcar stop to the place the whole world associates with the movies.
The farming town
- 1853
One adobe hut stands on the land that will become Hollywood.
- 1870
An agricultural community has grown up in the area, with thriving crops.
- 1886
The name Hollywood is coined. It is often traced to the native toyon, or “California holly,” whose clusters of bright red berries covered the hillsides each winter.
- 1900
Hollywood has a post office, a newspaper, a hotel and two markets for its 500 residents. Los Angeles, with 100,000 people, lies seven miles east through the citrus groves. A single-track streetcar runs down Prospect Avenue, but service is infrequent and the trip takes two hours.
- 1902
The first section of the Hollywood Hotel opens, the first major hotel in town.
- 1903
Hollywood incorporates as a municipality. Its ordinances ban the sale of liquor except by pharmacists, and ban driving cattle through the streets in herds of more than two hundred.
- 1904
A new trolley line from Los Angeles opens up Prospect Avenue, the street later renamed Hollywood Boulevard.
- 1910
Struggling to secure an adequate water supply, Hollywood votes to be annexed by the City of Los Angeles, which was bringing water down from the Owens Valley through its new aqueduct.
The movies arrive
- 1911
The Nestor Company opens Hollywood’s first film studio at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street.
- 1914
Cecil B. DeMille and Jesse Lasky’s company makes The Squaw Man in a rented barn near Selig and Vine, the first feature-length film shot in Hollywood. The barn survives today as the Hollywood Heritage Museum, across from the Hollywood Bowl.
- 1922
The Hollywood Bowl holds its first season in a natural amphitheater in the hills.
- 1923
A real estate sign reading “Hollywoodland” goes up in the hills above town.
- 1927
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre opens on Hollywood Boulevard, and stars begin leaving their hand and footprints in its forecourt. That fall, The Jazz Singer brings synchronized dialogue to the screen.
See the art print: Opening Night — The Dawn of Sound - 1929
The first Academy Awards are presented at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Wings wins the top prize.
See the art print: A Night of Triumph — Wings Takes Flight - 1939
Often called Hollywood’s greatest single year, with releases including Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Wuthering Heights.
See the art print: Western Nights — Stagecoach Premiere - 1949
The last four letters come down, and the hillside sign simply reads “Hollywood.”
Stars in the sidewalk
- 1958
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is created, with southern California artist Oliver Weismuller hired by the city to give Hollywood a “face lift.”
- 1960
The first star, for Joanne Woodward, is placed on February 9. Some 1,558 stars are awarded in the first sixteen months.
- 1963
The studio era nears its end as television takes over the lots. Joseph Cotten narrates Hollywood and the Stars: Hollywood, USA, a documentary tour of the town that year.
Watch the film: Hollywood in 1963 - 1978
The City of Los Angeles designates the Walk of Fame a Cultural/Historic Landmark.
A new century
- 2000
The Metro Red Line subway reaches Hollywood on June 24, with stations beneath Hollywood & Highland and Hollywood & Vine. For the first time since the Red Car streetcars stopped running, rail service links the boulevard to downtown.
- 2001
The Kodak Theatre opens on November 9 in the new Hollywood & Highland complex, next door to Grauman’s Chinese. The following March, the Academy Awards return to Hollywood for the first time since 1960. The theatre was renamed the Dolby in 2012.
- 2005
More than 2,400 of the original 2,500 blank stars have been filled, and the Walk extends west to La Brea Avenue.
- 2017
Netflix moves its Los Angeles headquarters into a new tower at Sunset Bronson Studios, the old Warner Bros. lot where The Jazz Singer was filmed ninety years earlier. The streaming era has arrived in old Hollywood.
- 2026
With local film and TV production in a deep slump, a $450-million studio rises on the site of a former Sears store on Santa Monica Boulevard. Echelon Studios Hollywood stacks five soundstages into a single building, crowned by a rooftop neighborhood of bungalows that echo the private retreats of the classic studio lots. It is due to open in early 2027.
Read the story: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 30, 2026