The heyday of bowling alleys in Southern California is the subject of a new book. Author Chris Nichols gives all credit to Covina Bowl, his family’s favored bowling center of the 1980s.
“I loved it so much,” says Nichols, 53, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. “I spent so many childhood milestones there.”
Nichols organized a 60th anniversary party in 2016 for Covina Bowl. (I was there.) After the last pin fell in 2017, he was among those who successfully advocated for declaring the building a local landmark and for retaining its 60-foot sign and dramatic exterior as part of a housing development, about which I wrote in January.
“It’s been beautifully restored. The character-defining features were saved,” Nichols exults.
Adriene Biondo and Chris Nichols co-authored “Bowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling,” a new look at the 1950s-’60s heyday of the sport. They are seen at Highland Park Bowl, a 1927 alley that is still going strong. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A fan and scholar of midcentury modern architecture, Nichols joined the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Modern Committee in 1988, when he was a lad of 17. Classic coffee shops are one interest. Disneyland is another. Bowling alleys rate highly with him too.
He organized a 2014 exhibit at L.A.’s Architecture + Design Museum titled “Bowlarama: California Bowling Architecture 1954-1964,” which highlighted the swooping rooflines, towering signs and glass-fronted coffee shops of the Jet Age era.
I was there for that too. Apparently I am the Tom Joad of bowling.
That groundwork informs “Bowlarama: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling,” by Nichols with co-author Adriene Biondo, newly published by Angel City Press. I went to the launch event Sept. 7 at Highland Park Bowl, a 1927 bowling alley that is the oldest in L.A. County.
“Bowlarama” is not a full-on history of bowling, Nichols is quick to say.
“It’s about the art, the architecture, the music,” Nichols says. “Very little is about the gaming.” He does love the game, though, bowling the first Wednesday of the month at a roving selection of centers with friends.
In the week after the party, I read every word of “Bowlarama.” If you like the subject, you will love the book, which has great images and fun text.
As Nichols and Biondo explain, Southern California was the epicenter for the explosion of bowling alleys (and pins at the end of lanes) as suburbs blossomed.
Some at the launch party for “Bowlarama” at Highland Park Bowl on Sept. 7 are clad in vintage bowling shirts. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Covina got one of the first and biggest. 1956’s 40-lane Covina Bowl was an early commission for Long Beach-based Powers, Daly and DeRosa, who went on to design dozens of bowling alleys. Covina Bowl, Nichols and Biondo write, was the firm’s “masterpiece” and “set the standard for the Googie bowling center.”
With a soaring pyramid at its entrance, Covina Bowl had a coffee shop, a nightclub named the Pyramid Room, billiards, a supervised children’s playroom, a barber shop and a beauty parlor. By 1962 its bowling expanded to 50 lanes.
Think about that: a bowling alley with 40 lanes operating 24 hours a day was so busy, it made financial sense to add 10 lanes. But this was an era in which one in four Americans considered themselves bowlers.
With banquet and meeting rooms for clubs and civic groups, Covina Bowl became a center of community life in the fledgling city. Nearly every city had a bowling alley, sometimes more than one.
“Bowlarama” names many. Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga are represented via Anaheim Bowl, Azusa Lanes and Kapu-Kai in Cucamonga, the latter cited in Joan Didion’s “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream.”
Primitive meets modern inside the coffee shop at Stardust Bowl (1960, Armet & Davis) in West Covina. To prevent glare that might disrupt play, bowling alleys did not have windows, but their street-facing coffee shops were a different story. (Courtesy Angel City Press)
Others include Plaza Lanes in Long Beach, the Bowl-O-Drome in Torrance, Friendly Hills in Whittier (now an Aldi), Bahama Lanes in Pasadena, Garey Center Bowl in Pomona, Thunderbird Lanes in Ontario, Arrowhead Lanes in San Bernardino, Indio Bowl and Banning Bowl.
Bowling, previously an almost purely male domain, went middle-American, encouraging women, children and entire families to bowl. Automatic pinsetters and ball return made bowling less intimidating.
“Bowling centers took their place alongside cul-de-sacs and backyard barbecues as icons of suburbia,” Nichols and Biondo write.
At the peak, some bowling alleys had Las Vegas-style lounges with name performers. Couples dressed up to go there. The New Year’s Eve 1962 headliner at Covina Bowl’s Pyramid Room was, astonishingly, Mel Tormé.
And some had white-tablecloth restaurants where you could get steak and lobster. Celebrity chef Mike Roy, who in 1946 had the first televised cooking show in America, in 1957 was maitre d’ and head chef at two restaurants — both at bowling alleys.
One was at Hollywood Legion Lanes. The other was in Rialto’s Orange Bowl. My brain is struggling to make sense of this.
Naturally it couldn’t last. The bowling bubble burst. In 1962, the industry collapsed.
Bowling was still big, but gradually, hours were curtailed, lounges closed, the eye-catching exteriors and signs were deemed gaudy, and rising real-estate values made land-hogging bowling alleys (and drive-in theaters) prime targets for development.
Originally the Sepulveda Bowl at its 1957 opening, this San Fernando Valley bowling alley later became Mission Hills Bowl, with the mascot of a sandaled friar rolling a ball. It’s seen here in 2015, its last year in operation. The building is now a Ross Dress for Less — with aisles, not lanes. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Some have been repurposed. The former Sepulveda Bowl, later Mission Hills Bowl, closed in 2015 and is now a Ross Dress for Less that retains its decorative I-beams with Swiss cheese holes.
Some remain in 2024, like Montclair’s Bowlium. “They’re like the ruins of some grand, lost civilization that is still hanging on,” Nichols says. “You drive by the Bowlium and it’s like, what is this huge beast out here in the dirt, with crazy dead trees in the empty lot next door?”
Biondo, 68, who grew up in Sunland and Tujunga, saw many bowling alleys as a girl on road trips in the family’s 1952 Ford station wagon.
Related Articles
Silverlake Coffee, an oasis in a turbulent world, is closing
Readers share personal stories from Ontario’s Jay Littleton Ball Park
1930s Ontario ballpark from ‘A League of Their Own’ is now history
‘Wizard of Oz’ was tested on San Bernardino and Pomona audiences
LA’s famed Tiny Naylor’s had a coffee shop in Montclair
“My dad would pull into a town and look for a bowling center,” Biondo recalls. “It was the heart of a town.”
Alan Hess, an architect and historic consultant, came to the book party. He has long championed commercial architecture, like coffee shops from the Googie era, that critics used to ignore. Bowling alleys didn’t get respect either.
“They were there, everybody went to them and nobody thought they were important at the time,” Hess tells me. “It was only later that we realized how important they are, because we’ve lost so many of them.”
Time to hit the lanes.
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, three gutter balls. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.