HossC, in the post of mine that you linked to in yours, I had quoted a person who was commenting about the artwork in and around the Lytton Bank, who wrote:
"In 1962, a 75 foot-long photo mural on the history of motion pictures was also installed
in the bank complex, in what was then called the Lytton Center of the Visual Arts. It would
be interesting to know if the mural is there but covered up somewhere."
In this photo that
E_R posted...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
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...you can see the words "Lytton Center..." in the building in the background which appears to be where there is a strip of fast food places currently. I am wondering what exactly this building (The Lytton Center of the Visual Arts) was. The references I've found about it all keep saying that Lytton created the "Lytton Center of the Visual Arts" in one of his bank buildings, but the Shulman photos and others don't seem to suggest the bank itself was this exact place, though there obviously was artwork involved in it. The above photo is the first indication I've had it was a separate building along the back of the property where said fast food places (mostly) are currently housed.
There's a photo
HERE that shows Leslie Caron and Warren Beatty at a party at the Center given by Richard Burton in October of 1964.
A newspaper announcement from 1965:
from Russ Karas
This photo is from an event at the center in 1968.
Art Lynch
Pictured are Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury, Forry Ackerman & Mrs. Harryhausen.
Several sources have contradictory notations about the Lytton Center, saying it was IN the bank building on the first floor, another the second floor and similar, but the book Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood by Alison Trope, probably has the best information: (page 69)
In June 1962, Bart Lytton opened the one million dollar Lytton Center of the Visual Arts. [He had purchased a collection of pre-cinema artifacts in 1961 that were to be a donation to the Hollywood Motion Picture Museum that was being planned at the time.]
He decided to display them beforehand in the Lytton Center. In many ways, the Lytton Center proved to be a miniature version of the proposed Hollywood Museum, offering exhibitions of priceless artifacts and production processes; a theatre for audiences that screened canonized works of film and television; roundtable discussions with Hollywood crafts people; a library; and a photomural of films and stars. [This is what a commenter mentioned in my previous quote above.]
Information about Bart Lytton shows a complicated man, verging on the noir and complicated by his varied, and often failed, ambitions.
The above description of the Lytton Center would indicate a separate building from the bank at Sunset and Crescent Heights, but I've not as yet found any specific photos of it.
HossC, do any of the aerials show such a structure? It has to have been demolished, because the various places in that location currently could not have been incorporated into any previously exisiting building as far as I could tell.
Who knew this Center was there?! It's the first I was aware of it. Sounds pretty grand and a shame it folded, especially seeing that the Hollywood Museum did as well.
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Hoss, I believe you're right..this is the Garden of Allah model.
or just lazy hippies. (I'm kidding)
Despite Cavitt's reference on this map, very little seems available or remembered of this would-be business. (There is vintage glassware available with Cavitt's Topeka KS, but the relationship, if any, is unknown.)
The image, is part of a large image collection devoted or related to "Pneumonic Plague Outbreak Sites and Rats in Los Angeles." 
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