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Demolition of the National Theatre: Still Makes Me Sick
posted by
Ross Melnick
on
June 9, 2011 at 10:08 am
This one got past my CT radar, but if you love the National Theatre in Westwood (Los Angeles), check out this amazing tombstone in a Curbed LA blog post. That empty lot is a dagger in my stomach and in my soul.
Its demolition still makes me sick.
Comments (6)
Same here, from across the continent. And it still kills me that I lost my Instamatic snapshot of the “Exorcist” window on the east side of the building.
A damned shame…
I’m certainly not happy when a theater becomes a drug store or some other retail venture, but to tear down this irreplaceable Cinema Treasure for a weed-filled dirt lot is unbearable. And it just sits there every day wallowing in its ignominious shame. It really symbolizes everything depressing about Westwood in 2011.
Sounds like Westwood village isn’t such a great place after all. What a shame…
Ugh, we we’re just talking about The National and that horrible empty lot tonight. I don’t generally wish bad upon someone, but I have to hope that the developer/owner that destroyed The National the way they did got some financial karmic retribution. It definitely seemed like they tore that thing down as fast as they did almost to fend off any additional preservation efforts. And now, here we are three years later and NOTHING has been done with land deemed so important and valuable they had to destroy a local favorite to get at it. To think, if the building would have been allowed to survive an extra year or two, Regency might have picked it up along with the Village and Bruin (maybe).
Westwood is most certainly dying, but it appears to be self-inflicted.
Ya know….Even though I don’t live in the Los Angeles area, it’s disheartening to hear/read about the demolitions of precious movie theatres, because every single time that happens, no matter where it is, it’s an attack on movie theatres and the movie business, generally. It makes me wonder if any of the venerable areas in our neck of the woods might be next on the chopping block, if one gets the drift.