100 years ago, the famed Hollywood sign was a real estate ad

The iconic Hollywood sign adorns the hillside overlooking Los Angeles, a 50-ft. high, 400-ft. wide monument to the city’s film and television industry. But when it was erected a century ago, the sign’s purpose was to serve another enormous Los Angeles industry: real estate.

The sign, originally spelling out“Hollywoodland,” was officially completed on Dec. 8, 1923—the exact date on which 4,000 light bulbs first illuminated the letters. They did so in dramatic fashion, first with “Holly” lighting up and then “Wood” followed by “Land” before the entire word “Hollywoodland.” The goal was to lure people living in downtown LA to a new namesake housing development in the city’s Upper Beachwood Canyon neighborhood.

The Hollywood sign’s debut year was also the birth year of several other LA landmark buildings: the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in East Hollywood, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Biltmore Hotel, and the 5,300-seater Angelus Temple.

The depraved years

The $21,000 advertisement was only meant to stay up for 18 months. But while the locals didn’t care for it—just like Parisians once detested the “unsightly” new Eiffel Tower—tourists lapped it up. So the city let the sign stay, though it slowly fell into disrepair.

The letters become infamously emblematic of the rough movie business in 1932 when Peg Entwistle, a 24-year-old British actor and aspiring movie star, died by suicide by jumping off of the sign’s “H.”

In 1944, the Hollywoodland development went out of business and the city quietly took control of the sign. In 1949, when the letter “H” fell down during a storm, the city came to the rescue, propping up the fallen letter and tearing down “LAND” to remove the reference to the real estate project. But, despite the intervention, the sign only became more dilapidated over time.

In 1977, someone hung a human-sized dummy from the “W,” with a faux “suicide” note, donating his last $20.00 “for restoration of my favorite Hollywood landmark and just look at it now…a DECEASED Hollywood Sign lover.”

Sprucing up the Hollywood sign

The Hollywood sign got its first facelift in nearly 30 years in May 1995. The sign was repainted and a security system was installed to prevent vandalism.

A bright Y2K

On New Year’s Eve 1999, the Hollywood sign was lit for the first time since the 1984 Summer Olympics. The sign was illuminated with multiple colors using over 2.7 million watts of power.

A fresh coat of paint

In November 2005, the Hollywood sign got a month-long makeover. It was repainted for the first time in 20 years with a fresh coat of primer and a specially formulated paint color called Hollywood White by Bay Cal Commercial Painting.

A site of activism...

In February 2010, activists from The Trust for Public Land covered the Hollywood sign with banners to read “SAVE the PEAK” in an effort to prevent developers from building new houses there. The nonprofit campaigned to raise funds to buy Cahuenga Peak and prevent developers from purchasing the 138-acre parcel to build mansions around the Hollywood sign.

The trust managed to raise the target $12.5 million—thanks to donations from several Hollywood heavyweights like Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and studios like Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox—and stop the development in its tracks.

Over the decades, activists have used the sign for protest. In 1976, artist Danny Finegood altered the sign to read “Hollyweed” on New Year’s Day to advocate for a new California bill that would relax marijuana possession laws. Again in 1987, Finegood scaled the sign to change it to “Ollywood” to protest the idolization of Lt. Col. Oliver North after his Iran-Contra hearings.

... and a site of celebration

Sometimes, the city of Los Angeles gets in on cheeky plans to alter the sign. In February 2022, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office announced plans to change the Hollywood sign to read “Rams House” to celebrate the LA Rams’ Super Bowl victory. But they didn’t entirely succeed: Instead, the sign ended up looking something like “Rallyouse.”

But the city is also keeping the sign looking fresh. In 2022, LA repainted the sign for the first time since 2012 in preparation of the centennial celebration.