In the mid–1920s, as Hollywood Boulevard was transforming from a dusty trolley route into the film capital’s neon-lit main street, a veteran character actor named Henry Bergman quietly set about building a different kind of stage. Bergman, best known as a stalwart member of Charlie Chaplin’s stock company, had spent decades in theaters and on movie sets, playing everything from bartenders and mayors to comic foils. By 1925, he was ready for a venture where the audience could eat, drink, and gossip between pictures. With Chaplin’s financial backing, Bergman took over a storefront near the corner of Hollywood and Vine and created Henry’s Café at 6325 Hollywood Boulevard—part delicatessen, part late-night canteen, and, for a brief but glittering moment, one of the town’s most important meeting places.

HOLLYWOOD - On Sunset Boulevard, where neon once shimmered and film stars once slept, the Hollywood Center Motel now sits like a ghost from another age — its faded sign and boarded windows silently bearing witness to a century of dreams, danger, and decay. Once a symbol of modern travel and mid-century charm, the motel is now a symbol of Hollywood’s uneasy relationship with its past — and its present.

HOLLYWOOD - Before the Walk of Fame, before neon marquees turned Hollywood Boulevard into a river of light, there was a quieter kind of grandeur — one built on marble columns and whispered invitations.