It was a different time, a simpler time when it didn’t take much to shock and awe us. Those of us of a certain age didn’t have in-car DVD players to entertain us or our kids when we traveled cross country on two lane roads, but we did have “Eye Spy.” Certainly, an interest in drawing in customers motivated restaurant and shop owners to erect eye-popping edifices to draw in business. The structures were known as “programmatic architecture,” a trend responsible for businesses shaped like hats (The Brown Derby), airplanes (The Airplane Cafe), women in hoop skirts (Betsy Ann, an ice cream and candy shop), dogs (the Bulldog Cafe), and even pigs (The Pig Cafe).

The original Bulldog Cafe was built in 1928 on Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, a free standing structure that housed a business selling ice cream and tamales. The building was demolished in 1966, but Petersen Automotive Museum built a replica of it in 1994. When the museum announced in 2014 that it would be demolishing the Bulldog because of an interior redesign, entrepreneur and preservationist, Bobby Green, saved the replica Bulldog Cafe and moved it to the back patio of the Idle Hour Cafe in North Hollywood where it can now be rented for parties.

Image found on Pinterest and happily credited upon receipt of information