Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal
Some of the locations he has stories about are:
John Burroughs Junior High
Fairfax High School
Hollywood High School
The Airliner Lounge
Lucy’s Restaurant
Leroy Shoes
Melrose Grotto
Polar Palace
Spyders Pool Hall
Dave's Texaco Gas Station
The Beer Garden
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Melrose Grotto
For a location that was around over 70 years, there's not a lot of detailed information about this place.
What I can piece together is that the Melrose Grotto was built sometime in the 1920's. It was purchased by a man named Nick Slavich in 1936. At some point along the way he remodeled, expanded and changed the name of it to
Nickodell, a name derived from his and his wife's names.
I have yet to find a photo of the restaurant as the Melrose Grotto, but here are some items from the place:
Melrose Grotto Menu (said to be dated May 16,1942)
matchbook
ashtray
The address of the place has been noted in several places as 5507, 5509, and 5511, with the above menu noting it as 5507-09-11. The matchbook has a 5507-11 address.
In any case it was along Melrose to the south of Paramount Studios and RKO Pictures. To make things more confusing, there was a second restaurant located at 1600 Selma Ave. at Argyle, not too far from NBC's Radio City, one source saying it opened in 1928.
I noticed that people writing about the places tend to confuse the two locations and some don't seem to know there were actually two separate places. Because both locations were in proximity to radio, film and later television production studios, they both had a star-studded clientele through the years as memories and posts about the places attest to.
There are some photos of the locations after the name change to Nickodell, a place I
have heard of, and am surprised there is no mention of on NLA so far!
NICKODELL RESTAURANT
Nickodell Postcard (Selma & Argyle location)
H.P.Oliver
Selma & Argyle 1951 (notice there is another large Nickodell roof sign that you can see part of on the right side)
Michael Ryerson/Flickr
Selma & Argyle today
GSV
Here is the Melrose location of Nickodell:
Nickodell's Melrose (notice the Paramount Studio arches in the photo to the right; the Melrose entrance)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/blkmarket/3999815930/
postcard
Rlizabeth Fuller/Flickr
great signage!
Flickr
There seems not to have been much concern about the Argyle location closing down and, in fact, I haven't even found a notation when that occurred, but the Nov. 30, 1993 closing of the Melrose restaurant had press and fans coming out to reminisce and lament. The Slavich family owned it until around 1979. By 1993 Paramount itself owned the restaurant and the land it was on. It doesn't appear that Paramount had a hand in the shuttering of the famous place, but rather a lack of clientele due to changing tastes and times.
Reposting this map for location reference: