Est. 1921 · Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, June 5, 1968 · Site of six Academy Awards ceremonies (1930–1943) · Cocoanut Grove nightclub landmark · Preserved pantry within active K-12 campus
The Ambassador Hotel opened in January 1921 on a 23-acre campus along Wilshire Boulevard, conceived as a resort destination within the city. Its most celebrated feature was the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which opened with the hotel and became one of the premier entertainment venues in Los Angeles through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, hosting Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner, and dozens of other performers. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its annual awards ceremony at the hotel six times between 1930 and 1943.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic presidential primary on June 4, 1968 and addressed supporters in the Embassy Ballroom. Shortly after midnight on June 5, Kennedy moved through a service pantry behind the main stage to avoid the crowd. Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-American, fired a .22-caliber revolver in the pantry. Kennedy was struck three times. He was declared dead at Good Samaritan Hospital at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968. Five other people were wounded in the same pantry. Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder in 1969 and remains incarcerated.
The hotel closed in 1989 after a prolonged financial decline and was used for film and television productions through the 1990s and early 2000s. LAUSD acquired the property in 2001 after a protracted dispute over whether to preserve or demolish the building. Demolition of the main hotel structure was completed in 2005–2006. As a condition of the environmental review process, LAUSD preserved the former Embassy Ballroom service pantry and the Cocoanut Grove space within the new campus. The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools opened in 2010. An exterior interpretive marker on the Wilshire Blvd sidewalk acknowledges the site's historical significance.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassador_Hotel_(Los_Angeles)
- https://www.thereallosangelestours.com/crime-seen-the-ambassador-hotel/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Robert_F._Kennedy
Cold spotsShadow figuresObjects moved
The Ambassador Hotel spent more than a decade as a film location after its 1989 closure, and the crews working in the building documented their experience of the pantry in terms that track consistently with other sites of violent death. Cold spots concentrated in the northeast corner of the pantry — approximately where Kennedy fell — were reported by separate crews on separate productions. Security guards doing overnight rounds described a weight to the space that other rooms in the building did not have.
Crime tour operators who cover the Wilshire Boulevard corridor frame the site straightforwardly: one of the most politically significant acts of violence in postwar American history occurred in that pantry on June 5, 1968, and the pantry still exists. The preservation requirement built into the LAUSD environmental review means the physical space where Kennedy was shot continues to stand, fifty-eight years later, inside an active middle school campus.
Public access to the pantry is not available. The dark tourism value of this site is primarily commemorative and historical rather than experiential — the exterior marker, the school name, and the drive-by along Wilshire Blvd are the accessible elements. The paranormal accounts from the production-use era cannot be reinvestigated; the building's function as a school forecloses it.
Notable Entities
Robert F. Kennedy
