Mazatlan Theatre
3355 N. Eastern Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90032
3355 N. Eastern Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90032
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Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 19 comments)
DeAnda and Sons is still at this address. Function should be office space.
http://tinyurl.com/5ex3h6
That must have been difficult to figure out.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1940 and an effective construction date of 1949 for the building at 3355 N. Eastern Avenue. Unless they’ve made a mistake (it’s been known to happen), this was not the El Sereno Theatre which got an organ in 1924. As I said in an earlier comment, this building does look like it was built in the 1930s or 1940s, even on its back and side walls, so the assessor’s office is probably right about the date.
There must have been another El Sereno Theater in Los Angeles in 1924. The organ list does contain some errors, but I have never found one that concerns a Wurlitzer. They are usually pretty accurate.
A search for El Sereno Theater in the LA Times database turns up these items:
An ad for the Cameo in El Sereno in August 1924.
An ad for the El Sereno Theater at Huntington Drive in November 1942.
An ad for a church called the Film Pulpit (formerly the El Sereno Theater) in January 1951.
A June 1970 ad for the El Cameo in El Sereno.
There are some more ads for the El Cameo in the mid 1970s. If I see any reference to an 1920s El Sereno under some other criteria, I will pass it along.
The best candidate for the El Sereno Theater to which the organ was delivered is probably still the Cameo, which opened in 1924. However, it’s listed under the name Cameo in the 1925 city directory page ken mc linked to in his October 18, 2008 comment on the Aloha Theatre page. No El Sereno Theater is listed in that directory. It seems unlikely that they’d have opened as the El Sereno and changed the name to Cameo only few months later. My best guess is that the owners of the Cameo didn’t choose the theater’s name until construction was well advanced and the organ already delivered.
That is a possibility. This link will give you the location where a WurliTzer Opus 840 was installed.
I stopped by this building today; the American Legion logo is a part of the terrazzo, it is not brass.
This closed theater was recently repainted and looks better than it has in years. It’s a great name for this L.A. neighborhood. There is another theater about 2 blocks away that is now a used furniture store.
http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/25029.html
Looks like it has been used for some years as a meeting hall / concert venue / rental space. The family that has owned it for decades is trying to raise money to make it a community center. Click this link for info on donating and to see a little movie of the interior and exterior: http://www.indiegogo.com/savethemazatla