When I recently wrote about John Mayer preserving the Chaplin Studios name, a reader’s sharp-eyed comment raised an intriguing question: was the historic studio itself once physically moved to accommodate the widening of La Brea Avenue? I knew the street had been expanded, but I hadn’t realized that Chaplin’s studio had quite literally been lifted and shifted to make way for progress—until I looked into it. What I discovered was one of those quietly astonishing Hollywood stories that sounds apocryphal until the records confirm it, and it’s a tale worth telling in full.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
In the summer of 1929, as Los Angeles accelerated into the automobile age, even Charlie Chaplin was not immune to the city’s relentless push for wider streets and heavier traffic. That year, La Brea Avenue—once a relatively modest north–south roadway—was formally widened through Hollywood, and the expansion came directly at the expense of one of the most famous private studio lots in the world: Charlie Chaplin’s own studio at the corner of La Brea and De Longpré Avenue.
City engineers ordered that fifteen feet of frontage along La Brea be taken for the widening, stretching approximately six hundred feet from De Longpré north to Sunset Boulevard. Unlike some public works projects that relied on condemnation and compensation, this widening placed the burden squarely on the property owner. Chaplin was required to comply with the city’s new street line—and to pay for the work himself. Contemporary reports made it clear that the reconstruction would cost close to $100,000, a staggering sum even for Hollywood royalty, and that the city would not absorb the expense.
Work was announced in June 1929 and commenced almost immediately. According to studio officials, the task involved more than trimming hedges or adjusting fences. Entire portions of the studio complex had to be reconstructed or relocated to conform to the new curb line. Buildings affected included the main reception hall, Chaplin’s dressing room, executive offices, his private projection room, and laboratory facilities. Two hundred feet of carefully maintained privet hedge were destroyed outright. For six to eight weeks, the studio—still active and producing—became a construction site, its familiar frontage dismantled and reassembled farther back from the street.
The timing was particularly striking. Chaplin was deep into the production of City Lights, a film that already demanded extraordinary space and control. Earlier, he had expanded operations onto adjacent property associated with his half-brother Sidney Chaplin to accommodate the production. Now, city-mandated reconstruction further disrupted the carefully balanced ecosystem of the lot. Observers at the time noted that Chaplin was likely “losing money on the deal,” though they added, with characteristic Hollywood understatement, that he could afford it.
Workers place Chaplin Studios on rollers as the famed lot is physically shifted fifteen feet back from La Brea Avenue to comply with the city’s street-widening orders during the summer of 1929. (Photo Credit: Author's collection)
Yet the forced setback was not treated merely as a loss. Studio management emphasized that the reconstruction would modernize the facility, bringing new equipment and updated infrastructure. The rebuilding included improvements that allowed for easier installation of sound-synchronization wiring—an acknowledgment that the silent era was ending, even as Chaplin famously resisted it. In a twist of irony, a street widening driven by automobiles and modern traffic helped prepare the studio for cinema’s next technological leap.
The episode offers a revealing snapshot of late-1920s Hollywood, when the city’s explosive growth routinely collided with its cultural landmarks. Chaplin, one of the most powerful figures in world cinema, had no special exemption from municipal planning. La Brea Avenue would be widened, traffic would flow, and even the most famous studio in Hollywood would move—fifteen feet back—at its owner’s expense.
Completed later that summer, the Chaplin Studio remained but was altered. It was still considered one of Los Angeles's beauty spots and a tourist attraction, but while the whimsical architecture was still there, its position to the street and to the city had shifted. The widening of La Brea was more than an infrastructure project; it was a sign that, for all the magic of Hollywood, it had been built in a city that would not be stopped, that in the struggle between art and engineering, even Charlie Chaplin had to yield to Los Angeles itself.
My sincere thanks to author Terry Chester Shulman for bringing this remarkable story to my attention.
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