Hollywood was platted in 1921 as Hollywood by the Sea, a planned community from Florida's 1920s land boom, and incorporated in 1925. The city points to Historic Hollywood Lakes, east of U.S. 1 between Washington and Johnson Streets, as its oldest neighborhood, and its Harrison/Tyler and Beach historic districts hold many buildings in Mediterranean Revival, Art Deco and other 1920s and 1930s styles.
Growth kept going after that first wave: by 1960 the city had more than 12,000 single-family homes plus about 2,400 hotel units. Hollywood covers roughly 30.8 square miles, around 11% of it water, including two yacht basins dredged during early development and tied into the Intracoastal Waterway, along with 5 to 6 miles of Atlantic beach.