Design, features and amenities
The earliest building permit for the site is dated July, 1946. It lists the value of the two-story, 59-unit motel to be constructed as $95,000. [5] Koufax later advertised "74 luxurious air-conditioned rooms" at "popular prices". [2] [6] [5] The motel had a horseshoe shape. [2] The Tropicana's pool was kidney bean-shaped, later painted black "probably so they don’t have to clean it so often." [7]
The Trop was located near the end of Route 66 [8] and originally a stopover for travelling salesmen from the mid-west. However, the motel's most famous clients were working rock bands, increasingly after Elektra Sound Recorders opened nearby in January 1968. [9] Inexpensive pricing ($29.75 a night if guests stayed the week), made the Tropicana affordable. [5] [2] A number of struggling bands lived in their cars in the motel's back parking lot (which the management was fully aware of). [7] Another attraction of the Trop was proximity to Sunset Strip venues such as The Troubador [2] and Barney's Beanery. [1]
Photographer Brad Elterman said, "There was a lot of really good energy there. It had an interesting garden courtyard layout—no long dark hallways to get to your room." Elterman added, "There was one payphone booth and everyone worked it for incoming and outgoing calls. It was like an office." [1] William S. Burroughs wrote in Rolling Stone in 1980, "On the patio are rusty metal tables, deck chairs, palms and banana trees: a rundown Raymond Chandler set from the 1950s. One expects to find a dead man floating in the pool one morning." [7]
In 1968 [1] the original Duke's Coffee Shop opened as The Tropicana's resident eatery. [10] With the Tropicana's scheduled demolition, Dukes relocated in late 1986 [5] to 8909 Sunset Boulevard. [11]
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