Googie's Coffee Shop (everyone simply called it Googies) started off as a small restaurant located at 8100 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, next to the famous Schwab’s Pharmacy.

It was designed in 1949 by architect John Lautner and lent its name to Googie architecture, the genre of flamboyant space-age architecture popular in the 1950s and 60s.

A 1952 article in House and Home magazine featured a photograph of the building and this description: ‘[The building] starts off on the level like any other building but suddenly it breaks for the sky. The bright red roof of cellular steel decking suddenly tilts upward as if swung on a hinge, and the whole building goes up with it like a rocket ramp.’

Googie’s became a popular meeting place for Hollywood celebrities, including the actor James Dean who apparently made late night visits with a group of friends that included actor Dennis Hopper and television’s first horror host Maila Nurmi, known as Vampira.

Other notable guests during the 1950s were Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Woods, Steve McQueen and comedian Lenny Bruce. According to onetime manager Steve Hayes, Bruce got into a fight inside the restaurant in 1957 and was thrown through a plate glass window.

Additional Googie's locations were built at 5th & Olive Street in downtown Los Angeles in 1955. Architects Armet & Davis created an eye-catching roof for the restaurant which was located on the ground floor of the six-story San Carlos Hotel.

Another location was opened in the City National Bank building at 420 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. This Googie's featured in Life magazine in 1956.  Yet another Googie’s was located at the Atlantic Square shopping center at 2080 S. Atlantic Boulevard in Monterey Park.

The restaurant chain was originally owned by Mortimer C. Burton and Ernie Goldenfeld but changed hands several times from the 1960s to the 1980s and operated as Gee Gee's, Steak 'n Stein and Pippy's Pizza.

The property, along with neighboring Schwab's Pharmacy, was sold to a developer and demolished in 1988. The site is now a two-story shopping center called 8000 Sunset Strip.