A 1931 remodeling of the Imperial for the United Artists chain was the work of the Los Angeles architectural firm of Walker & Eisen, with Clifford Balch, associated. The project was reported in the April 17 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor that year.
Two cards in the L.A. Library’s California Index cite articles that raise questions about the reported history of this theater. The 1913 Kinema might have been expanded, or replaced by a new building, in 1920.
A May 24, 1913, item in Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer says that San Francisco architect G.F. King had prepared plans for the $35,000 Kinema Theatre, to be built on J Street (since renamed Fulton Street) in Fresno.
A January 30, 1920 item in the successor publication, Southwest Builder & Contractor, said that Albert G. Lansburgh would prepeare plans for the $200,000 Kinema Theatre which was to be built at 1317-1321 J Street in Fresno.
I don’t know what the conflicting address is about (perhaps it was an error by the magazine), but a 1920 report of a Kinema being designed by Lansburgh, coupled with the low cost of the 1913 Kinema, suggests that either there were two theaters of this name in Fresno, or that Lansburgh’s design of 1920 was for a major expansion of the original 1913 theater. I’ve been unable to find any clarification of this mystery on the Internet. Fresno newspapers from 1920 might provide the answer, if somebody has access to them.
I should add that the theater in the 1930 photo linked in Brad Smith’s comment above does not look like anything that would have been built in 1913. The Spanish Colonial Revival style of the exterior was launched in California by the Panama-California Exposition, held in San Diego in 1915. By 1920, the date of the Lansburgh design for the Kinema, it was all the rage.
Motion Picture Herald of June 8, 1935, reported that Fox West Coast Theatres had reopened the New Rialto Theatre in San Francisco following extensive remodeling. Earlier that year, the March issue of Architect & Engineer had reported that the plans for the $40,000 remodeling project had been drawn by architect F. Frederic Amandes.
Amandes was the architect for at least four other theater projects. Those I’ve been able to attribute, all from 1936, were the Enean Theatre at Pittsubrg, California, and remodeling jobs for the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
A 1937 remodeling of the Milano Theatre was the work of architect A.A. Cantin, according to Architect & Engineer of April, 1937. The theater had suffered major damage in a fire, and the rebuilding was expected to cost $25,000. 1937 was the year the house reopened as the Palace, according to Jack Tillmany’s comment near the top of this page.
mdmjcc: I was viewing the older back issues of Boxoffice on the web site issuu.com, but the magazine has removed its archive from that free site (and all the links to it I’ve posted here have gone dead.)
They are in the process of posting the archive to the vault on their own site, where it will be available only to subscribers. I don’t know how long it will take them to get the entire archive posted. I’m not a subscriber myself (its beyond the means of my very limited budget), so I haven’t been keeping track of their progress.
vokoban: Owensmouth was the original name of the district that later became Canoga Park. There’s still an Owensmouth Avenue, running from Chatsworth in the north to Woodland Hills in the south and located between Canoga Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
Post your comment above to the Canoga Theatre page. It opened as the Madrid in 1926, though the page is missing the aka. The Canoga has been demolished, but its location is now the site of a recently built live theater which is also called the Madrid.
A card in the L.A. library’s California Index cites a 1948/1949 theatre catalog naming the architect of the Capitola Theatre as Harold Onstead. I’ve been unable to find anything else about him on the Internet.
The Southgate Cinema 20 is one of many multiplexes designed by the Grand Rapids, Michigan based architectural firm Paradigm Design, and is one of the projects featured in the Entertainment section of the online portfolio of their work. The page gives the total seating capacity as 4,997, and says that 60% of it is stadium style and the remainder sloped.
The photo ken mc linked to is not the Milwaukee Varsity. A photo of the Varsity was featured in an article in the signage industry trade journal Signs of the Times, issue of August, 2007. The article was about Poblocki & Sons, the Milwaukee-based company which provided the marquee for the theater. A pdf of the article is provided by the Poblocki Sign Company web site.
A few photos of other theaters for which Poblocki provided signage, including both old houses and new multiplexes, can be seen in the company’s Entertainment Portfolio.
This theater is already listed at Cinema Treasures under its current operating name, the Fox Cineplex Theatres. For a long time it was known as the Fox Banning Theatre, which is listed as an aka, but the aka under which it opened in 1928, the Banning Theatre, is not listed.
Checking the data page for the photo I just linked to, I see it is dated 1939. As the photo is from the Dick Whittington Studios, which usually kept good records, it’s probably correct.
I don’t see it linked in any comment above, so here’s another photo of the Arrow from the USC Digital Archive. The newest cars on the street appear to be from about 1940. The theater was showing Spanish language movies, and there was a sign reading “Stage Show” above the marquee.
No theaters are listed on 24th Street in the 1915 City Directory, and no theater called the Fairyland is listed at all. If the police closed the Fairyland in August, 1915, it’s likely that it had opened sometime that year and thus was not included in that year’s directory, which was probably compiled before the house opened.
Unfortunately, the next directory available to me is from 1923, and while a Fairyland Theatre is listed that year at 1122 W. 24th St, the County Assessor’s office says that the building at that location was erected in 1921. It’s possible that the 1915 Fairyland was at that address, and that a new building was built there for the theater in 1921, but it’s also possible that the 1915 theater was on a different site.
If the 1915 Fairyland was in an earlier building at 1122 W. 24th, then it’s already listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Union Theatre. If it was at another location near 24th and Hoover, it wasn’t in the building now housing the 24th Street Theatre. The Assessor’s office gives the building at 1117 W. 24th an original construction date of 1930, with an effectively built date of 1965.
The 24th Street Theatre web site says that it was established in 1997, and I can’t find a theater listed at its address in any of the city directories available from the L.A. library, so I’d imagine it was converted from another use. In 1942, it housed an auto painting shop run by Sam Garcia. Though the 1960s its listed only under the name Eli Gennewey, with no indication of what sort of enterprise Mr. Gennewey might have conducted on the premises. I’ve found no other mention of Eli Gennewey on the Internet.
As long as we don’t know for certain the address of the 1915 Fairyland Theatre, this page might as well remain. If it is later found that it was at the same address as the 1923 Fairyland, this page could be eliminated. I’ll post the information I have now about the theater’s early days on the Union Theatre page.
This building erected in 1921 was probably opened as the Fairyland Theatre, and remained a movie or stage theater under various names for more than two decades before being converted into a union hall. The house was listed as the Fairyland Theatre in the Los Angeles City Directory of 1923. It was listed as the Union Square Theatre in the 1929 directory.
I’ve been unable to discover when it first closed as a movie theater, but in January, 1935, silent movie star Louise Glaum reopened the house as a live theater, the Louise Glaum Little Theatre of Union Square (oddly, the 1936 City Directory still listed the house under the category Motion Picture Theatres, as “Glaum Louise Playhouse.”) But by 1938, the house was listed as a motion picture theater called the Continental. It was still the Continental in the 1939 directory, but was the Union Theatre in the 1942 directory.
The next city directory available online is from 1956, by which time the theater had become the union hall of the tile worker’s local. It remained a building trades union hall at least into the 1980s.
A Fairlyland Theatre was mentioned in an August, 1915, Los Angeles Times item, when its location was given as 24th and Hoover. As this earlier Fairyland Theatre is not listed in the 1915 City Directory (it most likely opened after the directory for that year had been compiled), I don’t know if it was at the same address as the second Fairyland. The earlier Fairyland has a Cinema Treasures page. As it might have been at a different location, that page should probably remain for now. If it is eventually determined that it was in an earlier building on the same lot where the second Fairyland’s building was built in 1921, its existence can be noted in the description on this page, and the other page can be removed.
The 1915 Los Angeles City Directory lists a Clune’s Theatre at 547 S. Broadway, but it isn’t there in the 1923 directory. The Jeans store is in the building Sid Grauman built to provide a Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan Theatre in 1923. The Shell Theatre would have been in the building just north of it, which the Assessor’s office says was built in 1901, with an effectively built date of 1935.
So far I’ve been unable to discover if the Shell was a storefront conversion, or if there had been a live theater at this address in 1901 and it became a movie house. As the directory for 1923 has no theater listed at the Shell’s address, it must have been gone by then. 547 S. Broadway housed a millinery company in 1923.
In any case, the 1901 building that includes this address is still standing, though it’s likely that no trace of its former theatrical use remains.
The Knoll is listed in the 1936 city directory, but not in the 1929 directory. It’s still listed in the 1956 directory, though at 6614 S. Western, but it’s gone by the 1960 edition. The only even number in the 6600 block listed in 1960 was the church on the corner (6608), still standing, which the assessor’s office says was built in 1955. My guess would be that Mount Tabor Baptist Missionary Church owned the whole block by 1960, although the big church building now in mid-block wasn’t built until 1972.
I was never able to track down a scrap of information about this place. I don’t think it was ever a movie theater, unless it was a porn house. I certainly never saw it listed in the L.A. Times.
The Vernon Theatre was also listed in the 1929 City Directory, but hadn’t been listed in the 1923 edition. By 1956 it was no longer being listed. The assessor’s office says that the small apartment building now on this lot was built in 1997.
The Star Theatre was still listed in the 1929 city directory, but was not listed in the 1936 directory or later. The Assessor’s office still lists the same 1910 building at 2710 S. San Pedro, so it hasn’t been demolished in the last couple of years.
The 1915 directory doesn’t list the Star, or any other theater, at this address, though, so unless the theater happened to be temporarily closed that year, or just got left out of the directory, the building was most likely built for another purpose in 1910 and then converted into a theater some time between 1915 and 1923.
It turns out I do remember having seen this theater, but not while it was still in operation. I remember that a few times in the late 1950s and early 1960s I passed by a former theater occupied by a wholesale school supply store. For the last few years I’ve been trying to remember exactly where it was, and never made the connection with the San Carlos, but the School Days Equipment Company is listed at the San Carlos’s address in the Los Angeles City Directory for 1956.
A 1931 remodeling of the Imperial for the United Artists chain was the work of the Los Angeles architectural firm of Walker & Eisen, with Clifford Balch, associated. The project was reported in the April 17 issue of Southwest Builder & Contractor that year.
Two cards in the L.A. Library’s California Index cite articles that raise questions about the reported history of this theater. The 1913 Kinema might have been expanded, or replaced by a new building, in 1920.
A May 24, 1913, item in Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer says that San Francisco architect G.F. King had prepared plans for the $35,000 Kinema Theatre, to be built on J Street (since renamed Fulton Street) in Fresno.
A January 30, 1920 item in the successor publication, Southwest Builder & Contractor, said that Albert G. Lansburgh would prepeare plans for the $200,000 Kinema Theatre which was to be built at 1317-1321 J Street in Fresno.
I don’t know what the conflicting address is about (perhaps it was an error by the magazine), but a 1920 report of a Kinema being designed by Lansburgh, coupled with the low cost of the 1913 Kinema, suggests that either there were two theaters of this name in Fresno, or that Lansburgh’s design of 1920 was for a major expansion of the original 1913 theater. I’ve been unable to find any clarification of this mystery on the Internet. Fresno newspapers from 1920 might provide the answer, if somebody has access to them.
I should add that the theater in the 1930 photo linked in Brad Smith’s comment above does not look like anything that would have been built in 1913. The Spanish Colonial Revival style of the exterior was launched in California by the Panama-California Exposition, held in San Diego in 1915. By 1920, the date of the Lansburgh design for the Kinema, it was all the rage.
My source for the name of the architect of the 1936 remodeling of this theater misspelled his surname. It should be F. Frederic Amandes.
Motion Picture Herald of June 8, 1935, reported that Fox West Coast Theatres had reopened the New Rialto Theatre in San Francisco following extensive remodeling. Earlier that year, the March issue of Architect & Engineer had reported that the plans for the $40,000 remodeling project had been drawn by architect F. Frederic Amandes.
Amandes was the architect for at least four other theater projects. Those I’ve been able to attribute, all from 1936, were the Enean Theatre at Pittsubrg, California, and remodeling jobs for the Strand Theatre in Alameda, the Egyptian Theatre on San Francisco’s Market Street (listed at CT as the Guild Theatre), and the former T&D Theatre in Richmond, which became the Fox Theatre and then the United Artists Theatre.
A 1937 remodeling of the Milano Theatre was the work of architect A.A. Cantin, according to Architect & Engineer of April, 1937. The theater had suffered major damage in a fire, and the rebuilding was expected to cost $25,000. 1937 was the year the house reopened as the Palace, according to Jack Tillmany’s comment near the top of this page.
mdmjcc: I was viewing the older back issues of Boxoffice on the web site issuu.com, but the magazine has removed its archive from that free site (and all the links to it I’ve posted here have gone dead.)
They are in the process of posting the archive to the vault on their own site, where it will be available only to subscribers. I don’t know how long it will take them to get the entire archive posted. I’m not a subscriber myself (its beyond the means of my very limited budget), so I haven’t been keeping track of their progress.
vokoban: As the New Arlington wasn’t built until 1923, the 1914 reference must be to the first Arlington/Maynard.
vokoban: Owensmouth was the original name of the district that later became Canoga Park. There’s still an Owensmouth Avenue, running from Chatsworth in the north to Woodland Hills in the south and located between Canoga Avenue and Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
Post your comment above to the Canoga Theatre page. It opened as the Madrid in 1926, though the page is missing the aka. The Canoga has been demolished, but its location is now the site of a recently built live theater which is also called the Madrid.
A card in the L.A. library’s California Index cites a 1948/1949 theatre catalog naming the architect of the Capitola Theatre as Harold Onstead. I’ve been unable to find anything else about him on the Internet.
As the Bing Theatre was part of the original LACMA complex, it would be the work of the original architect, William Pereira.
The Southgate Cinema 20 is one of many multiplexes designed by the Grand Rapids, Michigan based architectural firm Paradigm Design, and is one of the projects featured in the Entertainment section of the online portfolio of their work. The page gives the total seating capacity as 4,997, and says that 60% of it is stadium style and the remainder sloped.
A small photo of the MJR Cinema 20 at Sterling Heights is displayed on this web page of the Precast Concrete Institute’s central region web site.
The Marketplace 20 is one of a number of multiplexes designed for the MJR circuit by the Grand Rapids architectural firm Paradigm Design.
The photo ken mc linked to is not the Milwaukee Varsity. A photo of the Varsity was featured in an article in the signage industry trade journal Signs of the Times, issue of August, 2007. The article was about Poblocki & Sons, the Milwaukee-based company which provided the marquee for the theater. A pdf of the article is provided by the Poblocki Sign Company web site.
A few photos of other theaters for which Poblocki provided signage, including both old houses and new multiplexes, can be seen in the company’s Entertainment Portfolio.
This theater is already listed at Cinema Treasures under its current operating name, the Fox Cineplex Theatres. For a long time it was known as the Fox Banning Theatre, which is listed as an aka, but the aka under which it opened in 1928, the Banning Theatre, is not listed.
Checking the data page for the photo I just linked to, I see it is dated 1939. As the photo is from the Dick Whittington Studios, which usually kept good records, it’s probably correct.
I don’t see it linked in any comment above, so here’s another photo of the Arrow from the USC Digital Archive. The newest cars on the street appear to be from about 1940. The theater was showing Spanish language movies, and there was a sign reading “Stage Show” above the marquee.
No theaters are listed on 24th Street in the 1915 City Directory, and no theater called the Fairyland is listed at all. If the police closed the Fairyland in August, 1915, it’s likely that it had opened sometime that year and thus was not included in that year’s directory, which was probably compiled before the house opened.
Unfortunately, the next directory available to me is from 1923, and while a Fairyland Theatre is listed that year at 1122 W. 24th St, the County Assessor’s office says that the building at that location was erected in 1921. It’s possible that the 1915 Fairyland was at that address, and that a new building was built there for the theater in 1921, but it’s also possible that the 1915 theater was on a different site.
If the 1915 Fairyland was in an earlier building at 1122 W. 24th, then it’s already listed at Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Union Theatre. If it was at another location near 24th and Hoover, it wasn’t in the building now housing the 24th Street Theatre. The Assessor’s office gives the building at 1117 W. 24th an original construction date of 1930, with an effectively built date of 1965.
The 24th Street Theatre web site says that it was established in 1997, and I can’t find a theater listed at its address in any of the city directories available from the L.A. library, so I’d imagine it was converted from another use. In 1942, it housed an auto painting shop run by Sam Garcia. Though the 1960s its listed only under the name Eli Gennewey, with no indication of what sort of enterprise Mr. Gennewey might have conducted on the premises. I’ve found no other mention of Eli Gennewey on the Internet.
As long as we don’t know for certain the address of the 1915 Fairyland Theatre, this page might as well remain. If it is later found that it was at the same address as the 1923 Fairyland, this page could be eliminated. I’ll post the information I have now about the theater’s early days on the Union Theatre page.
This building erected in 1921 was probably opened as the Fairyland Theatre, and remained a movie or stage theater under various names for more than two decades before being converted into a union hall. The house was listed as the Fairyland Theatre in the Los Angeles City Directory of 1923. It was listed as the Union Square Theatre in the 1929 directory.
I’ve been unable to discover when it first closed as a movie theater, but in January, 1935, silent movie star Louise Glaum reopened the house as a live theater, the Louise Glaum Little Theatre of Union Square (oddly, the 1936 City Directory still listed the house under the category Motion Picture Theatres, as “Glaum Louise Playhouse.”) But by 1938, the house was listed as a motion picture theater called the Continental. It was still the Continental in the 1939 directory, but was the Union Theatre in the 1942 directory.
The next city directory available online is from 1956, by which time the theater had become the union hall of the tile worker’s local. It remained a building trades union hall at least into the 1980s.
A Fairlyland Theatre was mentioned in an August, 1915, Los Angeles Times item, when its location was given as 24th and Hoover. As this earlier Fairyland Theatre is not listed in the 1915 City Directory (it most likely opened after the directory for that year had been compiled), I don’t know if it was at the same address as the second Fairyland. The earlier Fairyland has a Cinema Treasures page. As it might have been at a different location, that page should probably remain for now. If it is eventually determined that it was in an earlier building on the same lot where the second Fairyland’s building was built in 1921, its existence can be noted in the description on this page, and the other page can be removed.
The 1915 Los Angeles City Directory lists a Clune’s Theatre at 547 S. Broadway, but it isn’t there in the 1923 directory. The Jeans store is in the building Sid Grauman built to provide a Broadway entrance to the Metropolitan Theatre in 1923. The Shell Theatre would have been in the building just north of it, which the Assessor’s office says was built in 1901, with an effectively built date of 1935.
So far I’ve been unable to discover if the Shell was a storefront conversion, or if there had been a live theater at this address in 1901 and it became a movie house. As the directory for 1923 has no theater listed at the Shell’s address, it must have been gone by then. 547 S. Broadway housed a millinery company in 1923.
In any case, the 1901 building that includes this address is still standing, though it’s likely that no trace of its former theatrical use remains.
The Rosebud is also listed in the 1915 City Directory, and in the 1942 City Directory. Nothing is listed for this address in the 1956 directory.
The Knoll is listed in the 1936 city directory, but not in the 1929 directory. It’s still listed in the 1956 directory, though at 6614 S. Western, but it’s gone by the 1960 edition. The only even number in the 6600 block listed in 1960 was the church on the corner (6608), still standing, which the assessor’s office says was built in 1955. My guess would be that Mount Tabor Baptist Missionary Church owned the whole block by 1960, although the big church building now in mid-block wasn’t built until 1972.
I was never able to track down a scrap of information about this place. I don’t think it was ever a movie theater, unless it was a porn house. I certainly never saw it listed in the L.A. Times.
The Vernon Theatre was also listed in the 1929 City Directory, but hadn’t been listed in the 1923 edition. By 1956 it was no longer being listed. The assessor’s office says that the small apartment building now on this lot was built in 1997.
The Star Theatre was still listed in the 1929 city directory, but was not listed in the 1936 directory or later. The Assessor’s office still lists the same 1910 building at 2710 S. San Pedro, so it hasn’t been demolished in the last couple of years.
The 1915 directory doesn’t list the Star, or any other theater, at this address, though, so unless the theater happened to be temporarily closed that year, or just got left out of the directory, the building was most likely built for another purpose in 1910 and then converted into a theater some time between 1915 and 1923.
It turns out I do remember having seen this theater, but not while it was still in operation. I remember that a few times in the late 1950s and early 1960s I passed by a former theater occupied by a wholesale school supply store. For the last few years I’ve been trying to remember exactly where it was, and never made the connection with the San Carlos, but the School Days Equipment Company is listed at the San Carlos’s address in the Los Angeles City Directory for 1956.