Tiny Naylor's was a restaurant chain in Southern California started in 1949 by William Wallace "Tiny" Naylor and later run by his son Biff Naylor. W.W. Naylor had previously owned more than a dozen Tiny's Waffle Shops in Central California. [1] Naylor moved to Los Angeles and hired architect Douglas Honnold [1] to design an eye-catching drive-in restaurant at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue in Hollywood. [2] Actor Humphrey Bogart compared the slanted canopy roof of the building to "a huge bird about to take off.". [3] The restaurant featured Googie architecture and carhop service, and claimed to be the birthplace of the Patty melt. [4] Naylor died on August 17, 1959, while at the Del Mar racetrack. [5] The original location closed on March 11, 1984 [6] and was demolished. The site is currently a shopping center. [7]
Tiny Naylor's had a sister chain of Biff's Coffee Shops, named after W.W.'s son Biff Naylor. There were more than 40 Biff's and Tiny Naylor's locations in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. [8] In 1999 there was one Tiny Naylor's location remaining in Long Beach, California. [9] Biff Naylor came out of retirement to purchase the Du-par's restaurant chain in 2004. [8] Biff's daughter Jennifer Naylor, a chef in Malibu, consulted on the revamped menu. [10] Biff Naylor sold Du-par's in 2018. [11]
Googie architecture is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Space Age, and the Atomic Age. It originated in Southern California with the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was popular in the United States from roughly 1945 to the early 1970s.
A patty melt is a sandwich consisting of a ground beef patty with melted cheese and topped with caramelized onions between two slices of griddled bread. It is unclear when the patty melt was invented, but records exist of them having been commercially served as early as the 1940s. The patty melt is a variant of the traditional American cheeseburger, taking the burger back to its sandwich inspired roots by serving it on sliced bread versus a bun.
Mel's Drive-In is a term referring to two American restaurant chains, successors of a restaurant founded in 1947 by Mel Weiss and Harold Dobbs in San Francisco, California. It is closely associated with the film American Graffiti.
Norms Restaurants is a chain of diner-style restaurants in Southern California. Founded in 1949 by used-car salesman Norm Roybark, some restaurants are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are currently 20 locations in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties, with additional restaurants in Encino and Rialto scheduled to open in the near future.
Alan Hess is an American architect, author, lecturer and advocate for twentieth-century architectural preservation.
Pann's is a coffee shop restaurant in the Westchester neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, known for its history, role in movies, and distinctive architecture. The restaurant was opened by husband and wife George and Rena Poulos in 1958. It is also known for its neon sign, Googie architecture, and 1950s decor. The building and its iconic neon sign were designed by architects Eldon Davis and Helen Liu Fong of the Armet & Davis architectural firm. Pann's remains one of the best preserved examples of Davis' Googie designs, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Armet Davis Newlove Architects, formerly Armét & Davis, is a Californian architectural firm known for working in the Googie architecture style that marks many distinctive coffee shops and eateries in Southern California. The firm designed Pann's, the first Norms Restaurants location, the Holiday Bowl and many other iconic locations.
The Holiday Bowl was a bowling alley on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1958 by five Japanese-Americans and was a significant part of the rebuilding process of the Nikkei community after internment during World War II. The owners of the Holiday Bowl sold shares throughout the community in order to finance its construction."
Wich Stand was a '50s-style coffee shop restaurant and diner in Los Angeles, California, featuring a tilting blue roof and 35-foot spire (11 m), designed by architect Eldon Davis.
Du-par's is a diner-style restaurant in Los Angeles, California, that was once a modest-sized regional chain. The first location was founded in 1938 at the Los Angeles Farmers Market by James Dunn and Edward Parsons, who combined their surnames to create the restaurant's name. There is also an associated franchised restaurant in a Las Vegas casino.
Johnie's Coffee Shop is a former coffee shop and a well-known example of Googie architecture located on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, California. Architects Louis Armét and Eldon Davis of Armét & Davis designed the building, contributing to their reputation as the premier designers of Space Age or Googie coffee shops—including the landmark Pann's coffee shop in Ladera Heights, Norms Restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard, and several Bob's Big Boy restaurants.
Eldon Carlyle Davis was an American architect, considered largely responsible for the creation of Googie architecture, a form of modern architecture originating in Southern California. Googie architecture is largely influenced by Southern California's car culture and the Space Age of the mid-20th century. Davis was a founding partner of the Armet & Davis architectural firm which championed Googie architecture, including the original Norms Restaurant, a Googie coffee shop designed by Davis. For his work, the Los Angeles Times called Davis, "the father of the California coffee shop."
Louis Logue Armét was an American architect and strong proponent of Googie architecture during the mid-twentieth century.
Corky's was a restaurant in Los Angeles, California's Sherman Oaks neighborhood. It was designed by Armet & Davis and built in 1958. It has a sweeping roofline characteristic of Googie architecture. It was remodeled in the 1970s and has been restored in recent years. It originally opened as Stanley Burke's Coffee Shop on Van Nuys Boulevard and became Corky's in the early 1960s as it transitioned to being open 24-7. Billy Joel played piano at the eatery in the 1970s. After 25 years as Corky's, it became the Lamplighter, and was used in 2010 as a filming location for A Nightmare on Elm Street. The restaurant is now restored and renovated as a renewed Corky's.
Googie's Coffee Shop was a small restaurant located at 8100 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles next door to the famous Schwab's Pharmacy at the beginning of the Sunset Strip. It was designed in 1949 by architect John Lautner and lent its name to Googie architecture, a genre of modernist design in the 1950s and 60s. Interest in the style was revived by the 1986 book Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture by Alan Hess.
W.W. "Biff" Naylor is a retired restaurant owner in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Oakland, California in 1939 and graduated from Pennsylvania State University. His father W.W. “Tiny” Naylor started Tiny's Waffle Shops in Central California in the 1920s, and operated a chain of more than 40 Tiny Naylor's and Biff's restaurants in Southern California. Biff Naylor took over operations of Tiny Naylor's after his father's death in 1959 and was still operating at least one location in 1999. The Biff's restaurant chain of the 1940s was a "forerunner to all the modern coffee shops," Naylor told the San Jose Mercury News in 2016. Those restaurants employed modern architecture in the googie style, and innovations that would be adopted widely through the restaurant industry including open exhibition cooking kitchen, stainless steel counters, refrigerated pie cases, and plate "lowerators" that warmed or cooled plates as needed. In 2017 Los Angeles magazine food critic Patric Kuh called the longtime restaurant operator "Diner royalty". Saveur magazine wrote that Biff Naylor created "The best damn coffee shops ever" in their "Saveur 100" list
Ben Frank's was a restaurant in West Hollywood, California, opened in 1962 by Arthur Simms and Bob Ehrman. The location, surrounded by the famous nightclubs of the Sunset Strip, led to a celebrity clientele, and the 24-hour restaurant became a popular late night destination. The distinctive googie architecture and eye-catching neon sign helped attract musicians like Jim Morrison and Frank Zappa, as well as patrons of the nearby music venues. The youthful patrons that frequented the restaurant inspired the producers of the Monkees TV show to place an ad seeking "Ben Frank's Types" when casting the show in 1965.