An Architect's Influence

If Wayne McAllister Built It, the Cars Would Come

By Ed Leibowitz

ayne McAllister, who died in March at age 92, could arguably be called Southern California's foremost architect of automotive seduction. For decades, his coffee shops, restaurants, and casinos lured drivers with their eye-catching, flamboyant, car-friendly designs. His lasting influence on the Southern California and Las Vegas landscapes is seen in the larger-than-life mascots of modern-day burger joints and the profusion of theme casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

People still gape at the international-style monolith and pudgy mascot beside the neon-trimmed Bob's Big Boy in Toluca Lake, built in 1949, one of McAllister's few architectural survivors and a California State Point of Historical Interest. Here, as diners look out onto Riverside Drive through concave windows, they can imagine the nighttime world to be a fabulous aquarium: The convertibles and pickups stream past like oversized fish.

Alas, most of McAllister's work has been bulldozed or remodeled beyond recognition: his 24-hour drive-ins of the 1930s, which beckoned streamlined Packards and Mercurys like futuristic space probes to the shelter of a neon-lit mothership; the nightclubs and bars he designed to celebrate the end of Prohibition; and his famed chophouses along La Cienega's Restaurant Row. Nor did Vegas prove any kinder: McAllister's 1941 El Rancho Vegas, the first theme casino on the Strip, fell in a fire, while the Sands Hotel — the Rat Pack playground he built for Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin — was reduced to rubble in 1996.

Larger-than-life elements were a hallmark of Wayne McAllister's designs. Simons drive-in, Hollywood (top); Pig 'n Whistle, Los Angeles (right); Sands Hotel, Las Vegas (below).

Nevertheless, the enduring impact of McAllister's work is magnified by the sheer number of people who have frequented his creations and still hold the buildings in their memories. "Think how many people have lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright, or even visited a Frank Lloyd Wright," says Alan Hess, a San Jose architect and historian, "and then compare it to the number of people who have visited McAllister's Las Vegas hotels. Millions more people have been influenced by his designs and affected by their quality."

The existing landscape bears him out, yet McAllister had every expectation of surviving his own work. "The thing about restaurants," he once observed, "is they have a comparatively short life. Either they have to be completely refurbished or redone every 10 years, or they go under. And if they don't have a grease fire in the kitchen that burns them up, why, they just deteriorate and disappear."

Late last October, McAllister returned to the Toluca Lake Bob's for a dinner with members of the L.A. Conservancy's Modern Committee, which had won the restaurant its historic designation. As the architect dug into his steaming Big Boy and fries, he may have taken some satisfaction from the supper-time bustle. In this pleasant atmosphere, McAllister was willing to take a more sympathetic look at his career. "My work may not have impressed a lot of people back then," McAllister said, smiling, "but it certainly does now."

You are reading the September/October 2000 issue of Westways. Some information contained in this publication is time-sensitive, and the terms of some offers (cruise or vacation packages, for example) or services (provisions for roadside assistance, for example) might have been superseded by subsequent information and might no longer apply.