Drivers inching along Hollywood’s gridlock traffic might have noticed an unusual spire protruding high above Sunset Boulevard. The spindly white structure, with a sizable globe affixed to the top, features blocky red letters spelling out the words “Crossroads of the World.” In another odd twist, the spire appears to be attached to a building that resembles a landlocked ocean liner.

For nearly a century, the spire has acted as a beacon, drawing in visitors to Crossroads of the World’s rambling set of bungalows and small retail buildings. Covering several blocks, the outdoor mall, which opened in 1936, is done up in a hodgepodge of mid-century kitsch architecture styles, finished off with whimsical flourishes including a small lighthouse. Charming little cottages that wouldn’t be out of place at Disneyland’s Storybook Land dot the mall along with intricate tiled staircases.

Crossroads of the World in Los Angeles.

Although commercial tenants still reside and conduct business there, the place feels a bit forgotten. Chipped paint, weathered facades, fallen leaves and empty interiors gather dust across the property. Yet this place — one of the first outdoor malls in LA — also functions as an astonishing time capsule, an era when commercial glamor was bound up with fantasy, amid the boom of Hollywood as an industry.

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“It just really intermingled this kind of fascination of design for the movies, and design of houses, and living in a fantasy world,” architectural historian Elizabeth McMillian, who wrote a book about Streamline Moderne architecture, tells SFGATE.

Years later, Crossroads of the World would prove to be such a vivid monument to a particular era that in the 1990s, Disney would buy the rights to use its likeness at Disneyland. Hollywood productions would also flock there, particularly films set in the past like “LA Confidential,” where Crossroads of the World doubled as the office of Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito).

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But the story of Crossroads’ construction is befitting of its own pulpy noir, as LA Conservancy researcher Arabella Delgado explains. “It’s absolutely wild,” she says. “It has the most Hollywood story in the world … how has no one made a movie out of this?”

That’s because the shopping mall’s inception itself began as a chic cover-up — one that would detract from the grisly murder of a shady organized crime kingpin who was shot in one of the property’s bungalows.

The ushers of St.........

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