Two articles that are more recent than the one from August of 2006 linked above (though not very recent) about the Park Theatre (January 24, 2007 and January 31, 2007) are a bit more hopeful about the building’s future. A dance studio is not a theatre, of course, but such a use would at least make it possible to largely preserve the theatre’s interior layout and any surviving decoration in its auditorium. I’ve been unable to find any more recent information about Andy Duncan’s proposal. Maybe somebody from the area knows more.
The California Club occupied the building at 5th and Hill from 1904 until 1930. I think construction of the Title Guarantee building began in 1930 and it was completed in 1931.
The library has this .pdf of a brochure on Art Deco Los Angeles published by the L.A. Conservancy. It gives the dates of development for the Title Guaranty building as 1929-1931.
Ken: that picture is much later than 1920. I don’t think that Walker & Eisen’s National Bank of Commerce Building was completed until 1928. It replaced the old Masonic Temple, which was demolished early in 1925. The site was then used as a temporary location for P.E.’s Hill Street Station while the Subway Terminal was being built. After the terminal opened, the Bank of Commerce Building was built.
Yes, the College Theatre was adjacent to the California Club building. The building with the Coca-Cola ad (“Relieves Fatigue”!) was the old Masonic Temple. That’s where the Bank of Commerce Building was built a few years after this picture was taken.
The Auditorium is at the far right of this panorama of downtown taken from a rooftop on Olive Street south of Fourth, and dated 1923 by the L.A. library. It’s remarkable how big this theatre was.
By scrolling to the left end of the panorama you can also see the back and side walls of the Million Dollar Theatre at Third and Broadway. At center right of the panorama is a view of the Pacific Electric’s Hill Street Station, which was discussed in comments above.
Ken, I wonder if the boxy building at left foreground in that 1917 photo, across the street and down a bit from Tally’s, was the Woodley/Victory/Mission which was demolished to make way for the fourth Orpheum?
Those aerial photos clear up my puzzling childhood memory of the Fox Figueroa. I knew there was something unusual about the building’s configuration, and now I see that it was that the auditorium was set at an angle to the street. I have no idea how my memory transformed that angularity into an open corner plaza, though.
If the address of 649 was not a typo, then my guess would be that the Republic moved up the block to new quarters when that big office building on the northwest corner of 7th and Main was built. 649 S. Main would have been very near the corner of 7th Street.
The Melrose Hotel, from which the photo was taken, was on the east side of Grand Avenue north of Second Street, so, yes, the view is east with Olive Street in the foreground. That’s undoubtedly this Grand Theatre in the distance. It’s possible to see from this photo that the name is painted on the wall of the auditorium, not on the fly tower (as it appears it might be in this photo from the 1920s, by which time the name had been changed to Teatro Mexico.) That means that the Grand must have extended through the block most of the way to Los Angeles Street, just like the Hippodrome and the Burbank.
Ken, USC’s caption writer missed the most theatrically interesting feature of that photo. The big, dark building at center left is the side wall of the Mason Opera House, the auditorium on the left and the much taller stage house on the right, each with its own roof gable. I think that the white double door near the upper left corner of the building might have been the entrance to the segregated second balcony, which was entered from Hill Street rather than Broadway.
The problem is not with the definition of the word “theatre”, but with the use of the word “Building.” Edison’s Vitascope Theater in Buffalo, also known as Edisonia Hall, was built in the basement of the Ellicott Square Building building (an immense office and commercial block containing 500,000 square feet, completed in 1896), and was apparently the first commercial use of that basement, but the theatre was not part of the building’s original plans. That’s why all those reliable books don’t consider it the first building built especially to show movies. In fact there were many movie theatres— probably dozens— opened between 1896 and 1902 in spaces tucked into existing buildings, but Tally’s Electric Theatre on Main Street remains the first permanent building in the world known to have been built from the ground up with the intention of using it to house a movie theatre.
The Vitascope Theatre in Buffalo is significant, not only for being one of the first successful movie theatres in the world (it continued in operation for more than a year), but for being the first movie theatre operated by Mitchell Mark who, with his brother Moe, eventually operated dozens of theatres, including their flagship house, the Mark Strand Theatre on Broadway in New York.
Another interesting fact about Buffalo’s Vitascope Theatre is that, Like Thomas Tally’s Spring Street operation of 1896, it was paired with a phonograph parlor. Wikipedia displays an old advertisement for it. However, the buildings which housed Tally’s theatres, both the 1896 Spring Street operation at the back of his phonograph parlor and the 1902 Main Street operation in its purpose-built building, have been demolished, while Buffalo’s Ellicott Square Building still exists, so it’s still possible to get a good look at the storefront which housed Mark’s phonograph parlor, and (if the building’s owners will allow it) the basement space which housed his Vitascope Theatre.
So far, neither the Vitascope Theatre in Buffalo nor Vitascope Hall in New Orleans has been listed at Cinema Treasures.
The Rivoli was at 6258 Van Nuys Boulevard. It was open by 1921. In that year, a Bessie Harrison Prothero won a naming contest for the theatre, according to an article in the Van Nuys News of June 23, 1921. I don’t know if the theatre was brand new, or was an older theatre being renamed.
In 1935, the Rivoli suffered some $5,000 of damage from a fire, reported in the Van Nuys News of November 30. The theatre survived, and in 1939 both it and the nearby Van Nuys Theatre hosted premiers, the first ever held in the San Fernando Valley, according to a September 13 article in Daily Variety.
On May 30, 1941, Southwest Builder & Contractor announced that there would be a new facade and rest rooms at the Rivoli Theatre in Van Nuys, to be designed by architect Clifford Balch.
By 1960 the Rivoli had been renamed the Capri Theatre. It was still listed under that name in the National General Theatres section of the L.A. Times theatre guide on February 10, 1971.
I thought the shop in the theatre was selling Esther Williams brand swim wear, as displayed by that rather disturbing collection of mannequin torsos suspended from the underside of the marquee.
I don’t remember the Flick ever being anything but a storefront porn house. However, there were at least two small storefront theatres operating in Hollywood during the 1960s that were not porn houses. I remember seeing a revival of the 1930s era film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small storefront theatre on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard, somewhere west of Western Avenue, I think. This place had regular theatre seats, with the back rows on built-up risers, and a decent width screen (as good as the early AMC shoe boxes), and I think it may have become a porn house later.
Then there was another storefront conversion on the west side of a side street just north of Hollywood Boulevard. I’m not positive but I think it might have been Normandie. This was in a high-ceilinged shop which had a mezzanine above the front entrance and show windows, and I think it was either a coffee house or an art gallery (or maybe a bit of both) at the time of its conversion into a movie theatre. The projection room was installed on the mezzanine (I think it must have been 16mm) and the screen about two thirds of the way to the back of the room. The place had small tables and bentwood chairs like a typical coffee house of the era, and a couple of old couches. I only went there once and don’t remember any of the indie movie shorts that made up the program that night.
Southwest Builder & Contractor announced in its issue of July 10, 1925, that architects A. Godfrey Bailey and Carl Boller were completing the plans for the Broadway Theatre. The same publication announced the letting of the contracts for construction in their issue of July 31. The building was owned by F.E. Farnsworth and the theatre was leased to E.D. Yost.
The photo linked above by ken mc dates from no earlier than 1926, the year in which the movie Oh Billy, Behave was released. As the first Princess Theatre was demolished in 1923 to make way for the New Walker Theatre, later renamed the West Coast Theatre, the photo must depict the later New Princess Theatre.
A large percentage of the cards in the L.A. Library’s California Index do refer to this theatre as the Wilshire Theatre. The name Fox was not used though. The West Coast Circuit did not become Fox-West Coast until several years after this theatre opened, and the Fox name was not put on any of the circuit’s theatres until 1929. I don’t know in what year the Wilshire was renamed the Embassy, but it must have been before 1930 when Fox opened its new Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills.
This article from the Santa Barbara Independent issue of July 5, 2007, suggests that the start of renovation for the Lompoc Theatre is waiting only on a bit more fund raising.
The L.A. library’s California Index confirms a 1911 opening for the Neptune Theatre. The opening date was either May 22 or May 23, 1911, according to an ambiguous article in The Santa Monica Outlook of May 12, 1911. The theatre was owned by David Evans, and was upon opening operated under a lease by Los Angeles vaudeville impresario Arthur S. Hyman (whose Hyman Theatre at 8th and Broadway in Los Angeles later became the Garrick Theatre and was finally demolished to make way for the Tower Theatre.) According to the February 3, 1912 issue of of the regional entertainment publication, The Rounder, the Neptune in that year presented previews of a number of movies made by the Bison Company, a local Santa Monica studio.
Two articles that are more recent than the one from August of 2006 linked above (though not very recent) about the Park Theatre (January 24, 2007 and January 31, 2007) are a bit more hopeful about the building’s future. A dance studio is not a theatre, of course, but such a use would at least make it possible to largely preserve the theatre’s interior layout and any surviving decoration in its auditorium. I’ve been unable to find any more recent information about Andy Duncan’s proposal. Maybe somebody from the area knows more.
The California Club occupied the building at 5th and Hill from 1904 until 1930. I think construction of the Title Guarantee building began in 1930 and it was completed in 1931.
The library has this .pdf of a brochure on Art Deco Los Angeles published by the L.A. Conservancy. It gives the dates of development for the Title Guaranty building as 1929-1931.
That probably is the Garrick at the end of the block, plus it looks like the Rialto had been completed, or was nearly complete.
Ken: that picture is much later than 1920. I don’t think that Walker & Eisen’s National Bank of Commerce Building was completed until 1928. It replaced the old Masonic Temple, which was demolished early in 1925. The site was then used as a temporary location for P.E.’s Hill Street Station while the Subway Terminal was being built. After the terminal opened, the Bank of Commerce Building was built.
Yes, the College Theatre was adjacent to the California Club building. The building with the Coca-Cola ad (“Relieves Fatigue”!) was the old Masonic Temple. That’s where the Bank of Commerce Building was built a few years after this picture was taken.
The Auditorium is at the far right of this panorama of downtown taken from a rooftop on Olive Street south of Fourth, and dated 1923 by the L.A. library. It’s remarkable how big this theatre was.
By scrolling to the left end of the panorama you can also see the back and side walls of the Million Dollar Theatre at Third and Broadway. At center right of the panorama is a view of the Pacific Electric’s Hill Street Station, which was discussed in comments above.
Ken, I wonder if the boxy building at left foreground in that 1917 photo, across the street and down a bit from Tally’s, was the Woodley/Victory/Mission which was demolished to make way for the fourth Orpheum?
Ken, it was the Pan Pacific Auditorium that closed in 1972. The Pan Pacific Theatre remained open until 1984.
Those aerial photos clear up my puzzling childhood memory of the Fox Figueroa. I knew there was something unusual about the building’s configuration, and now I see that it was that the auditorium was set at an angle to the street. I have no idea how my memory transformed that angularity into an open corner plaza, though.
If the address of 649 was not a typo, then my guess would be that the Republic moved up the block to new quarters when that big office building on the northwest corner of 7th and Main was built. 649 S. Main would have been very near the corner of 7th Street.
The Melrose Hotel, from which the photo was taken, was on the east side of Grand Avenue north of Second Street, so, yes, the view is east with Olive Street in the foreground. That’s undoubtedly this Grand Theatre in the distance. It’s possible to see from this photo that the name is painted on the wall of the auditorium, not on the fly tower (as it appears it might be in this photo from the 1920s, by which time the name had been changed to Teatro Mexico.) That means that the Grand must have extended through the block most of the way to Los Angeles Street, just like the Hippodrome and the Burbank.
Ken, USC’s caption writer missed the most theatrically interesting feature of that photo. The big, dark building at center left is the side wall of the Mason Opera House, the auditorium on the left and the much taller stage house on the right, each with its own roof gable. I think that the white double door near the upper left corner of the building might have been the entrance to the segregated second balcony, which was entered from Hill Street rather than Broadway.
The problem is not with the definition of the word “theatre”, but with the use of the word “Building.” Edison’s Vitascope Theater in Buffalo, also known as Edisonia Hall, was built in the basement of the Ellicott Square Building building (an immense office and commercial block containing 500,000 square feet, completed in 1896), and was apparently the first commercial use of that basement, but the theatre was not part of the building’s original plans. That’s why all those reliable books don’t consider it the first building built especially to show movies. In fact there were many movie theatres— probably dozens— opened between 1896 and 1902 in spaces tucked into existing buildings, but Tally’s Electric Theatre on Main Street remains the first permanent building in the world known to have been built from the ground up with the intention of using it to house a movie theatre.
The Vitascope Theatre in Buffalo is significant, not only for being one of the first successful movie theatres in the world (it continued in operation for more than a year), but for being the first movie theatre operated by Mitchell Mark who, with his brother Moe, eventually operated dozens of theatres, including their flagship house, the Mark Strand Theatre on Broadway in New York.
Another interesting fact about Buffalo’s Vitascope Theatre is that, Like Thomas Tally’s Spring Street operation of 1896, it was paired with a phonograph parlor. Wikipedia displays an old advertisement for it. However, the buildings which housed Tally’s theatres, both the 1896 Spring Street operation at the back of his phonograph parlor and the 1902 Main Street operation in its purpose-built building, have been demolished, while Buffalo’s Ellicott Square Building still exists, so it’s still possible to get a good look at the storefront which housed Mark’s phonograph parlor, and (if the building’s owners will allow it) the basement space which housed his Vitascope Theatre.
So far, neither the Vitascope Theatre in Buffalo nor Vitascope Hall in New Orleans has been listed at Cinema Treasures.
Ken is correct. The Capri Theater is the renamed Rivoli Theatre.
The Rivoli was at 6258 Van Nuys Boulevard. It was open by 1921. In that year, a Bessie Harrison Prothero won a naming contest for the theatre, according to an article in the Van Nuys News of June 23, 1921. I don’t know if the theatre was brand new, or was an older theatre being renamed.
In 1935, the Rivoli suffered some $5,000 of damage from a fire, reported in the Van Nuys News of November 30. The theatre survived, and in 1939 both it and the nearby Van Nuys Theatre hosted premiers, the first ever held in the San Fernando Valley, according to a September 13 article in Daily Variety.
On May 30, 1941, Southwest Builder & Contractor announced that there would be a new facade and rest rooms at the Rivoli Theatre in Van Nuys, to be designed by architect Clifford Balch.
By 1960 the Rivoli had been renamed the Capri Theatre. It was still listed under that name in the National General Theatres section of the L.A. Times theatre guide on February 10, 1971.
I thought the shop in the theatre was selling Esther Williams brand swim wear, as displayed by that rather disturbing collection of mannequin torsos suspended from the underside of the marquee.
I don’t remember the Flick ever being anything but a storefront porn house. However, there were at least two small storefront theatres operating in Hollywood during the 1960s that were not porn houses. I remember seeing a revival of the 1930s era film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small storefront theatre on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard, somewhere west of Western Avenue, I think. This place had regular theatre seats, with the back rows on built-up risers, and a decent width screen (as good as the early AMC shoe boxes), and I think it may have become a porn house later.
Then there was another storefront conversion on the west side of a side street just north of Hollywood Boulevard. I’m not positive but I think it might have been Normandie. This was in a high-ceilinged shop which had a mezzanine above the front entrance and show windows, and I think it was either a coffee house or an art gallery (or maybe a bit of both) at the time of its conversion into a movie theatre. The projection room was installed on the mezzanine (I think it must have been 16mm) and the screen about two thirds of the way to the back of the room. The place had small tables and bentwood chairs like a typical coffee house of the era, and a couple of old couches. I only went there once and don’t remember any of the indie movie shorts that made up the program that night.
Southwest Builder & Contractor announced in its issue of July 10, 1925, that architects A. Godfrey Bailey and Carl Boller were completing the plans for the Broadway Theatre. The same publication announced the letting of the contracts for construction in their issue of July 31. The building was owned by F.E. Farnsworth and the theatre was leased to E.D. Yost.
This theatre needs an AKA as the Lyric Theatre, per Ron Pierce’s first paragraph at top.
The movie named on the marquee in the photo to which Lost Memory linked above, Oh Billy, Behave, was released in 1926.
The photo linked above by ken mc dates from no earlier than 1926, the year in which the movie Oh Billy, Behave was released. As the first Princess Theatre was demolished in 1923 to make way for the New Walker Theatre, later renamed the West Coast Theatre, the photo must depict the later New Princess Theatre.
A large percentage of the cards in the L.A. Library’s California Index do refer to this theatre as the Wilshire Theatre. The name Fox was not used though. The West Coast Circuit did not become Fox-West Coast until several years after this theatre opened, and the Fox name was not put on any of the circuit’s theatres until 1929. I don’t know in what year the Wilshire was renamed the Embassy, but it must have been before 1930 when Fox opened its new Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills.
The Lompoc Theatre now has this official website.
This article from the Santa Barbara Independent issue of July 5, 2007, suggests that the start of renovation for the Lompoc Theatre is waiting only on a bit more fund raising.
The Venice Timeline to which I linked in my comment of June 30, 2006 has been moved. The section I mentioned is now here.
Here is the Venice Timeline Index, with links to five sections each detailing two decades of the area’s history.
A minor point, but the street name is Western Avenue, not Western Boulevard.
The L.A. library’s California Index confirms a 1911 opening for the Neptune Theatre. The opening date was either May 22 or May 23, 1911, according to an ambiguous article in The Santa Monica Outlook of May 12, 1911. The theatre was owned by David Evans, and was upon opening operated under a lease by Los Angeles vaudeville impresario Arthur S. Hyman (whose Hyman Theatre at 8th and Broadway in Los Angeles later became the Garrick Theatre and was finally demolished to make way for the Tower Theatre.) According to the February 3, 1912 issue of of the regional entertainment publication, The Rounder, the Neptune in that year presented previews of a number of movies made by the Bison Company, a local Santa Monica studio.