During the second two decades of the twentieth century, the area around Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard came to be known as Gower Gulch, a sort of B-movie Poverty Row. Low-budget films, mainly of the Western variety, were being cranked out at dozens of small studios that lined the streets. CBS Columbia Square, on the intersection’s northwest corner, was the sites of radio broadcasts by Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and by George Burns and Gracie Allen.

It was also the former home of the Nestor Film Company, Tinseltown’s fist movie studio. Sunset-Gower Studios, at the southeast corner, used to be Columbia Pictures, which turned out such classics at From Here to Eternity, The Caine Mutiny, and It’s a Wonderful Life.