The big donuts of Southern California in the United States are frequently photographed examples of 20th-century vernacular roadside novelty architecture. They are landmark oversize donuts designed to attract the attention of potential customers on nearby roadways. In their heyday, according to one critic, the giant donuts were "one of many signs in Los Angeles that bordered on pop art, celebrating the effusiveness of life in the years after World War II. To many Americans, Southern California acquired the image of an orange juice stand shaped like an orange, or a hot dog stand shaped like a hot dog." [1]
Randy's Donuts along the 405 freeway near LAX is the most famous of four surviving big donuts constructed by businessman Russell C. Wendell, who started the Big Do-Nut Drive-In chain in the 1940s. [2] [3] (A fifth donut has been converted into a bagel.) [3] At one time there were 10 Do-Nut Drive-Ins with 22-foot (6.7 m)-diameter giant donuts. [3] [2] Wendell sold out in the 1970s. [3] Mrs. Chapman's Angel Food Donuts was another chain of about 20 stores that constructed slightly smaller big donuts to advertise their stores. [2] [4]
The Donut Hole in La Puente, jokingly described as a "distant cousin" to the rooftop big donuts, [2] is a drive-thru bakery; the gimmick being that drivers enter and exit through the holes in a pair of giant donuts to order and pick up their food. [5] All of these shops and their associated giant donuts are considered representative of Southern California's mid-century "car-culture-induced optimism and ambition, reflected in polychromatic, star-spangled coffee shops, gas stations, car washes, and other structures that once lured the gaze of passing motorists." [6]
Giant donuts and similar oversize object-shaped signs and buildings are generally now prohibited under contemporary municipal construction codes. [3]
Store | Image | Address | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Bellflower Bagels & Java [7] [8] | 17025 Bellflower Blvd., Bellflower [8] | Wendell Big Donut location; [8] now a bagel [2] | |
Dale's Donuts [8] | 15904 S. Atlantic Ave., Compton [1] | Atlantic & Alondra | |
The Donut Hole | 15300 E. Amar Rd., La Puente [5] | ||
Donut King II [8] | 15032 S. Western Ave., Gardena [8] [9] | ||
Dunkin' Donuts | 5560 E. 7th St., Long Beach | Originally an Angel Food Donuts, then the Daily Grind coffee shop for decades; preservationists convinced Dunkin' to save the old giant donut [4] | |
Mrs. Chapman's Angel Food Donuts | 3657 Santa Fe Ave., Long Beach | Only location still using the Mrs. Chapman's Angel Food donuts name [10] | |
Kindle's Donuts [2] | 10003 S. Normandie Ave., L.A. [8] | Wendell's first location; Century & Normandie [2] | |
Randy's Donuts | 805 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood [8] | Now a chain, Downey and Costa Mesa locations of Randy's each have a newly built giant donut; [11] [12] Inglewood location predates the 405 freeway [2] |
A doughnut or donut is a type of pastry made from leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty vendors. Doughnut is the traditional spelling, while donut is the simplified version; the terms are used interchangeably.
Winchell's Donut House is an international doughnut company and coffeehouse chain founded by Verne Winchell on October 8, 1948, in Temple City, California. Currently, there are over 170 stores in 6 western states, as well as Guam, Saipan, and Saudi Arabia. Several stores also operated in Nagoya, Japan in the past, with most stores located inside Uny supermarkets, as Uny Co., Ltd. was the master franchise holder in Japan. It is headquartered in the City of Industry, California.
The Gateway Cities Region, or Southeast Los Angeles County, is an urbanized region located in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, between the City of Los Angeles proper, Orange County, and the Pacific Ocean. The cluster of cities has been termed "Gateway Cities" in that they serve as a "gateway" between the LA and Orange counties, with the city of Cerritos equidistant from Downtown L.A., Long Beach, and Santa Ana in Orange County. As such, the area is central to the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), and has a population of approximately 2,000,000 residents.
Randy's Donuts is a bakery and a landmark building in Inglewood, California which is near Los Angeles International Airport. It is built in a style that dates to a period in the early 20th century that saw a proliferation of programmatic architecture throughout Southern California. This style had its heyday from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s. By the 1950s however, the trend of designing structures in the shape of the product sold there had changed to focus on signs rather than architecture itself. Randy's is represented by a giant doughnut on the roof of an otherwise ordinary drive-in that is a dedicated doughnut bakery. The building was designed by Henry J. Goodwin.
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