The restaurant opened in 1956 as Romeo's Times Square, a coffee shop designed by Armet and Davis at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The building captured the exact postwar moment Los Angeles fully committed to automobile suburban culture, serving drivers along the Miracle Mile corridor during the city's transformation into what boosters imagined would be the metropolis of the future. The restaurant became Ram's in the early 1960s before taking the Johnie's name that would define its identity for decades.
The building announces itself through a sharply angled, striped butterfly roofline that slopes dramatically from its peak down toward the rear of the structure, ending in a sharp decline meant to suggest a spaceship ready for takeoff. Floor to ceiling glass walls dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior, while natural stone pylons anchor the composition. Huge neon and flashing incandescent bulb signage spelling "Johnie's" stretches across the roofline, creating the archetypal Googie roadside spectacle designed to catch the eye of passing motorists.
