Hollywood Park was a great, and perhaps unlikely, place for music. If you were designing the next Carnegie Hall you would not design it like the Park, but if you were designing a place where the sound was totally present and the ambiance totally intimate for sharing a musical moment with great talent, Hollywood Park was right on.
Located at 23 Eastern Boulevard in Essex, Hollywood Park was distinctive for it’s unadorned clapboard looks and unpaved parking lot. There was a ‘package goods’ or off-sale liquor store—just a narrow counter, really—attached to the front where you might see one of the Temptations picking up a 6-pack to take back to the hotel after their last show.
We have been able to find very little in the way of photos and documentation on Hollywood Park. If you have anything to contribute, please contact us.
The club became The Toad Stool. The building was razed in 1971 (article below).
New Year’s Eve, 1958
(photo by Betty Marchetti, with thanks to James Hooper)
The Essex Diner and apartments currently occupy the former location of Hollywood Park / Toad Stool.
