Los Angeles has always been a city of strivers and social climbers. In the 1920s, this proclivity for luxury and respectability manifested in an unprecedented construction boom. The boom transformed the city from a Wild West outpost of small Victorians and adobes into a concrete and steel metropolis rivaling the great cities of the East Coast. On North Rossmore Avenue, in sophisticated Hancock Park, several "New York style" high-rise apartments were built near the new Wilshire Country Club to house the city's self-proclaimed aristocracy. The grandest of these was the El Royale, completed in the heady days before the stock market crash of 1929 brought LA back to earth. The El Royale not only survived the crash, but remained home to the elite and powerful for decades. And unlike most places built with pretensions of grandeur, the El Royale has retained its glamour to this day.
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