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Setting the scene
Los Angeles real-estate booster Harry Chandler and the Hollywoodland tract syndicate needed a hillside advertisement visible from the valley; they paid $21,000 for sheet-metal letters spelling 'Hollywoodland,' each fifty feet tall, studded with light bulbs to sell suburban plots below Griffith Park.
What happened
The Hollywood sign was erected in 1923 on Mount Lee, originally intended to last only eighteen months as a housing promotion rather than a film-industry emblem.
Why it still matters
It later dropped 'Land' and became a global symbol of American cinema after the 1949 restoration; preservation battles, prank alterations, and the 1978 rebuild funded by Alice Cooper and other donors turned the sign into protected cultural infrastructure.
Background
It later dropped Land and became a global symbol.