Estella Theater
515 N. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90012
515 N. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90012
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Here is an undated photo:
http://tinyurl.com/25v3yw
Here’s another one of those overlays I put together showing the location for this theater:
View link
ken mc, that picture is really interesting. I was down there the other day and I think the victorian building and the theater building are the vacant lot next to the church. The buildings to the far left are still standing and it looks like they are being restored in some way.
Here is a photo of Teatro Hidalgo from the 1920s:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics35/00067232.jpg
I went to the address of this theater today and the building is gone. The cafe and bakery that you spoke of is at 511 ½ North Main. Everything to the north of this is demolished up to the church. The building where the bakery was is being held up by supports and has no roof, so I don’t know if it is being repaired or readied for demolition.
I think that one of those remaining buildings was for a long time the location of a cafe and bakery called La Esperanza. I used to go there once in a while. They made a very good pan dulce. I think it moved or went out of business in the ‘70s, though. The place was spacious and had high ceilings, so there’s a possibility that, in earlier days, it could have housed theater of decent size.
From the satellite image on Google maps it looks like there is a 2, 3, or 4 story building where the theater should have been. I’m in San Francisco but I’ll go down there later in the week and look at the buildings. Maybe there is some clue remaining from the exterior.
If the building in which the Estella Theater was located still exists (its address places it just a few doors south of the historic Plaza Church), it would be part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. Two buildings do still exist on that block, separated from the Plaza Church to the north by a single vacant lot, with a parking lot to their south.
From the Los Angeles Times:
(March 26, 1926)
…..The film was produced, it was announced, to offset by a true picture some of the evil and mischief that Mexicans say is being done by certain newspaper interests that give Americans a sordid and distored idea of Lower California as a hotbed of vice, corruption and worthlessness.
The show’s premiere will take place at the Estella Theater, opposite the Plaza, next Sunday, and will continue there through the week. It is appearing here under the direction of the Pacific Coast Theaters, Inc., and was made in Mexico under direction of Rafael Corilla of Mexicali.
Mexican Consul Pesqueira, a number of newspaper men and prominent Latin Americans attended a preview of the film at the Res Theater, Third and Figueroa streets, yesterday and pronounced it a most instructive and educational film intended to show Lower California as it is.