As far as I know, davesrailpix.com is the only place that displays the Joe Testagrose collection. In addition to the various L.A. Railways collections (Testagrose’s is one of several L.A. Railway collections there, though it’s the largest by far), the site also has Pacific Electric pictures, also accessible from their main page
Ken Roe added the 1902 Tally’s Electric on Main Street to the site the other day, but under its last known name, Glockner’s Automatic Theatre.
From the Dave’s Railpix collection, Main Street in 1947, showing a glimpse of the Gaiety’s marquee at far right and, above and behind the streetcar in the foreground, the fancy top of the Optic Theatre building.
Drat. Maybe I conflated the proprietary name, or maybe Dave Rector owned both Admiral Theatres (in the 1930s he owned the Gordon Theatre on La Brea, so I know he had more than just one.)
vokoban: The Admiral on Main Street (AKA Rector’s Admiral) was a grind house, on the east side of the street, somewhere between the Regent and the Burbank. It was smaller than the Regent, but larger than the various storefront theatres in the area, so I suspect it might have actually been built as a theatre. It had a marquee of about the same style and vintage as the Regent’s.
When you posted the article about the Banner having gotten a new front in 1952 I thought that it might have become the Admiral, but I’ve seen comments indicating that the Banner was still the Banner into the 1970s, and the 1973 picture of it that Ken posted doesn’t resemble the Admiral. That’s why I now think it had to have been below 5th Street. I passed by it many times in the 1960s, and I’m sure I’d recognize it immediately if I saw a picture of it, but my memory has lost track of the exact location and other details.
Ken: I decided this was never the Admiral, as the entrance was too narrow. I have no memory of the Main Theatre existing in the early to mid 1960s, but I can’t say for certain that it wasn’t open yet at that time.
As for the elusive Admiral, I’ve also just about discarded the Banner as a possible location, and now suspect that the Admiral was in the block south of 5th Street. The other possibility is that I’ve unknowingly made a visit to (or actually come from) another Los Angeles which is in a parallel universe, and the Admiral existed there but not here.
Ken: Did you notice that the 1957 photo you just linked to at the Hippodrome page shows the Roxy Loan Company office located in the corner store of the Westminster Hotel building? I doubt they’d have had two locations so close together at the same time, so I’m guessing they moved to 4th and Main between the times the two pictures were taken. That might be when their premises in the Canadian Building were converted into the Main Theatre.
L.A. Library has this photo of the Panorama Building. Undated, but probably the 1890s. There are signs for the Panorama Book Store, a furniture store, a stable (in the center section, probably widening out at the back to an area large enough to accommodate a skating rink), and the offices of the Evening Express (probably upstairs.)
Here is a photo of the Play Room, at the northeast corner of Main and 3rd, as it appeared in 1991. The building occupies the location of the Liberty Theatre, and may be either later construction or the same building— minus the front portion which would have to have been demolished when East 3rd Street was connected directly to West 3rd Street, leaving the front sharply angled.
I have no idea if the Empire ever served as a movie theatre. It’s another of those mystery theatres. The birds-eye map is the only place I’ve ever seen any indication that it ever existed. If the garage was converted from the theatre, though, then it was a good-sized place and must have been important in its day- whenever that day was.
I’m wondering if the building on 3rd a bit west of Los Angeles Street, labeled “PRIV. GARAGE” on the Sanborn, might not be the building of the Empire Theatre that was just about in that location according to the 1909 Birds-eye map? The way the entrance is set up, and the area at the back of the building that looks as though it might have been a fly tower, suggest a conversion from theatre to garage.
vokoban: These overlay maps you’re making are excellent. The theatre at 458 S. Main was the Banner. I notice that the 1950 Sanborn doesn’t show the premises at 438 S. Main as being occupied by the Main Theatre. That was apparently still retail space then.
KenRoe: Thanks for the two addresses for the Liberty. 266 S. Main clears up the puzzle. So vokoban’s Sanborn map shows the location of Tally’s Electric, and the Liberty was just a couple of doors south of it. I was hoping the Liberty building would turn out to have been Tally’s, as it would have made a spectacular first movie theatre. But at least now we know just where to look in old pictures of Main Street for evidence of Tally’s Electric.
I believe the map to which you refer also shows a Clune’s building in the 700 block of S. Main (I can’t open my copy of the map because the file is huge and overwhelms my computer’s RAM.) It looks as though there were either two Clune’s Theatres on Main Street, or maybe Billy Clune had his business offices at this address in the 700 block. If both were theatres, then this one was by far the smallest of the two. That building at 5th and Main must have covered at least 15,000 square feet.
KenRoe: Then we’ve definitely got two different theatres in this short stretch of Main Street; Tally’s Electric (later called the Lyric) at 262 S. Main and the Liberty at 266 S. Main. That means we’re still in need of a photo of the Main Street Tally’s/Lyric (and both theatres still need their own CT pages, too.)
vokoban: The first section of the birds-eye map shows one of the Main Street theatres still missing from Cinema Treasures; Clune’s Theatre on the northwest corner of Main and 5th, where the north tower of the Rosslyn Hotel was built about 1916. (Other missing Main Street Theatres include Miller’s Theatre in the 800 block and Tally’s Electric Theatre as 262 S. Main.)
The middle section of your edited map shows the Empire Theatre on south side of 3rd Street east of Main. I’ve never found any references to that theatre anywhere else, so I don’t know if it was ever a movie theatre or not.
If you open up the full version of the birds-eye map (I never open my copy of it anymore because the huge file overwhelms my computer’s RAM), you’ll see yet another theatre, on the north side of 5th Street, northwest corner of (I think) Wall Street- between Los Angeles Street and San Pedro Street, anyway. If I remember correctly, the map labels it “Metropol” which I guess is an abbreviation of Metropolitan. I don’t know if that one was ever a movie theatre or not either.
Wait. If the room labeled “Theatre” in your Sanborn map is definitely 262 S. Main, then the Liberty and Tally’s Electric were not the same theatre. The Liberty would have been a bit farther south than Tally’s Electric. As can be seen by comparing map with old and new photos, the Liberty Theatre building backed (and backs?) up to the side wall of the Hotel Bisbee (aka Hotel Manhattan) on 3rd Street, but the room labeled “Theatre” on your map is a bit farther north than that. So there were two theatres on that section of that block of Main Street. Puzzling.
vokoban: I just checked your Flickr posts and it certainly looks as though the surviving building on Main Street at what is now the corner of 3rd could be the Liberty Theatre (and thus maybe Tally’s Electric), minus its front section. It’s the right size and shape, and looks as though it’s in the right location. The building depicted as the Liberty is either that one or was the vanished building immediately south of it.
Again, I’ve checked the two photos of the Liberty at Brent Dickerson’s page and I’m now quite sure that the truncated corner building still standing at the northeast corner 3rd and Main is at least on what’s left of the lot once occupied by the Liberty Theatre, and may be the same building. A hidden landmark!
Tally’s Electric on Main Street doesn’t yet have a listing at Cinema Treasures. But there is what I’m pretty sure is a picture of it when it was called the Liberty Theatre. That page gives the Liberty’s address as 136 S. Main, but the photo on the page depicts a building which can be seen at the east end of 3rd street in some other old photos of the area. The Liberty name must have belonged to more than one theatre at various times. See my recent comment on that page for the explanation of why I think the picture may depict Tally’s Electric Theatre some time after he left Main Street.
ScottS: Finding the exact address of the pictured theatre would be very useful. I think it’s likely that there was indeed a Liberty Theatre at 136 S. Main Street, maybe operated by the same people who operated the Liberty Theatre in the photo above. But the photo is certainly the theatre on the east side of Main just a bit north of 3rd, unless the two buildings were identical twins.
There’s a possibility that this building was the location of Tally’s Electric Theatre, opened in 1902. The information currently at the top of the Tally’s Electric Theatre page is in the wrong place. The address given for the theatre there is actually that of Tally’s Phonograph Parlors on Spring Street (where he began showing movies in a small back room in 1896), while the theatre described in the opening section is the one Talley opened on Main Street in 1902, which was probably the first building ever erected specifically as a movie theatre anywhere.
According to MagicLantern’s comment on that page, the address of Tally’s Electric Theatre was 262 S. Main Street. It had to be close to the south end of the block. Before it was rerouted, 3rd Street jogged at Main Street. The block on the west side of Main Street from 2nd to 3rd was the standard length of a downtown block, 600 feet, but the block on the east side of the street was longer. Tally’s Electric must have been in that area. The northeast corner of 3rd and Main was occupied by the Grey Hotel. In that photo, there are low buildings just north of the hotel, but the side wall of a two story building can be seen at far left. I think that’s probably the south wall of the theatre. This photo is a bit too blurry to be sure, but it seems to me that the street number on the awning of the confectionery shop at center is 276, and the street number on the northernmost shop in the hotel building looks like 270. If that’s right, and the two story building at left is the theatre, then 262 would be a likely address for it. By 1910, when the postcard picture at the top of this page was made, the low building to the south would have been replaced by the two story building pictured.
I’m not sure when Third Street was finally connected directly across Main Street (probably no later than the 1930s), but at that time the Grey Hotel and its near neighbors were demolished to make way for the angled section of Third Street. It seems probable that the theatre, being directly east of the western section of Third Street, was knocked down too. The Chinese and Novelty Theatres mentioned in MagicLantern’s comment above were probably at 136 S. Main, and thus not in building pictured.
ScottS: PE first used the Butterfly paint scheme in 1939, according to both ERHA and the Seashore Trolly Museum’s web pages. I still suspect the most likely date to be between 1942-1945, when gasoline was rationed and traffic was thin. It could be as late as the early 1950s, when Metropolitan Coach Lines took over PE’s passenger services, but that seems less likely. The theatre marquee also gives a clue. “ATURE” is likely Victor Mature, and “ABLE” likely Betty Grable. They were teamed in the late 1941 release I Wake Up Screaming. They also appeared together in the 1942 movie Song of the Islands. They teamed again for Footlight Serenade, released later that same year. But they whey were also teamed in Wabash Avenue, released in 1950, so it isn’t conclusive evidence.
ken mc: The Main was in the Canadian Building, next door to the building with the marquee. I think the theatre must be the Regent, before its remodeling. See your own photo from January 2007 above for comparison.
The Hidalgo is the theatre posted on Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Estella. It was next to the Plaza church on North Main Street.
Somebody was asking for information about the Hidalgo just a couple of weeks ago. The question is on the Grand Theatre page. I left a reply with what little I knew, but there’s been no response yet. You could post the link to the Hidalgo there, in case the person comes back.
I’m glad to help, but do notice that I got those dates wrong. Most of the palace was actually built between 1353 and 1391. The Moors had already been driven out of Spain by 1533.
An interesting question. Ultimately, all Alhambra Theatres are named after the original Alhambra, a Moorish palace near Granada, Spain (lots of theatres are named Granada, too.) Most of the palace was built between 1533 and 1553. Here is a web page about it.
The name Alhambra means Red Castle in Arabic. The original Alhambra was the subject of a popular book by American author Washington Irving in the mid 19th century. Irving portrayed the palace and its gardens in a very romantic way, and that romanticism probably had a lot to do with making the name popular with theatre builders. Irving’s book is now in the public domain and can be read on-line.
As far as I know, davesrailpix.com is the only place that displays the Joe Testagrose collection. In addition to the various L.A. Railways collections (Testagrose’s is one of several L.A. Railway collections there, though it’s the largest by far), the site also has Pacific Electric pictures, also accessible from their main page
Ken Roe added the 1902 Tally’s Electric on Main Street to the site the other day, but under its last known name, Glockner’s Automatic Theatre.
523 S. Main was the location of the Gaiety Theatre
From the Dave’s Railpix collection, Main Street in 1947, showing a glimpse of the Gaiety’s marquee at far right and, above and behind the streetcar in the foreground, the fancy top of the Optic Theatre building.
Drat. Maybe I conflated the proprietary name, or maybe Dave Rector owned both Admiral Theatres (in the 1930s he owned the Gordon Theatre on La Brea, so I know he had more than just one.)
vokoban: The Admiral on Main Street (AKA Rector’s Admiral) was a grind house, on the east side of the street, somewhere between the Regent and the Burbank. It was smaller than the Regent, but larger than the various storefront theatres in the area, so I suspect it might have actually been built as a theatre. It had a marquee of about the same style and vintage as the Regent’s.
When you posted the article about the Banner having gotten a new front in 1952 I thought that it might have become the Admiral, but I’ve seen comments indicating that the Banner was still the Banner into the 1970s, and the 1973 picture of it that Ken posted doesn’t resemble the Admiral. That’s why I now think it had to have been below 5th Street. I passed by it many times in the 1960s, and I’m sure I’d recognize it immediately if I saw a picture of it, but my memory has lost track of the exact location and other details.
Ken: I decided this was never the Admiral, as the entrance was too narrow. I have no memory of the Main Theatre existing in the early to mid 1960s, but I can’t say for certain that it wasn’t open yet at that time.
As for the elusive Admiral, I’ve also just about discarded the Banner as a possible location, and now suspect that the Admiral was in the block south of 5th Street. The other possibility is that I’ve unknowingly made a visit to (or actually come from) another Los Angeles which is in a parallel universe, and the Admiral existed there but not here.
Ken, that 1931 photo must have been taken on the opening night. City Lights, indeed!
Ken: Did you notice that the 1957 photo you just linked to at the Hippodrome page shows the Roxy Loan Company office located in the corner store of the Westminster Hotel building? I doubt they’d have had two locations so close together at the same time, so I’m guessing they moved to 4th and Main between the times the two pictures were taken. That might be when their premises in the Canadian Building were converted into the Main Theatre.
L.A. Library has this photo of the Panorama Building. Undated, but probably the 1890s. There are signs for the Panorama Book Store, a furniture store, a stable (in the center section, probably widening out at the back to an area large enough to accommodate a skating rink), and the offices of the Evening Express (probably upstairs.)
Here is a photo of the Play Room, at the northeast corner of Main and 3rd, as it appeared in 1991. The building occupies the location of the Liberty Theatre, and may be either later construction or the same building— minus the front portion which would have to have been demolished when East 3rd Street was connected directly to West 3rd Street, leaving the front sharply angled.
I have no idea if the Empire ever served as a movie theatre. It’s another of those mystery theatres. The birds-eye map is the only place I’ve ever seen any indication that it ever existed. If the garage was converted from the theatre, though, then it was a good-sized place and must have been important in its day- whenever that day was.
I’m wondering if the building on 3rd a bit west of Los Angeles Street, labeled “PRIV. GARAGE” on the Sanborn, might not be the building of the Empire Theatre that was just about in that location according to the 1909 Birds-eye map? The way the entrance is set up, and the area at the back of the building that looks as though it might have been a fly tower, suggest a conversion from theatre to garage.
vokoban: These overlay maps you’re making are excellent. The theatre at 458 S. Main was the Banner. I notice that the 1950 Sanborn doesn’t show the premises at 438 S. Main as being occupied by the Main Theatre. That was apparently still retail space then.
KenRoe: Thanks for the two addresses for the Liberty. 266 S. Main clears up the puzzle. So vokoban’s Sanborn map shows the location of Tally’s Electric, and the Liberty was just a couple of doors south of it. I was hoping the Liberty building would turn out to have been Tally’s, as it would have made a spectacular first movie theatre. But at least now we know just where to look in old pictures of Main Street for evidence of Tally’s Electric.
I believe the map to which you refer also shows a Clune’s building in the 700 block of S. Main (I can’t open my copy of the map because the file is huge and overwhelms my computer’s RAM.) It looks as though there were either two Clune’s Theatres on Main Street, or maybe Billy Clune had his business offices at this address in the 700 block. If both were theatres, then this one was by far the smallest of the two. That building at 5th and Main must have covered at least 15,000 square feet.
KenRoe: Then we’ve definitely got two different theatres in this short stretch of Main Street; Tally’s Electric (later called the Lyric) at 262 S. Main and the Liberty at 266 S. Main. That means we’re still in need of a photo of the Main Street Tally’s/Lyric (and both theatres still need their own CT pages, too.)
vokoban: The first section of the birds-eye map shows one of the Main Street theatres still missing from Cinema Treasures; Clune’s Theatre on the northwest corner of Main and 5th, where the north tower of the Rosslyn Hotel was built about 1916. (Other missing Main Street Theatres include Miller’s Theatre in the 800 block and Tally’s Electric Theatre as 262 S. Main.)
The middle section of your edited map shows the Empire Theatre on south side of 3rd Street east of Main. I’ve never found any references to that theatre anywhere else, so I don’t know if it was ever a movie theatre or not.
If you open up the full version of the birds-eye map (I never open my copy of it anymore because the huge file overwhelms my computer’s RAM), you’ll see yet another theatre, on the north side of 5th Street, northwest corner of (I think) Wall Street- between Los Angeles Street and San Pedro Street, anyway. If I remember correctly, the map labels it “Metropol” which I guess is an abbreviation of Metropolitan. I don’t know if that one was ever a movie theatre or not either.
Wait. If the room labeled “Theatre” in your Sanborn map is definitely 262 S. Main, then the Liberty and Tally’s Electric were not the same theatre. The Liberty would have been a bit farther south than Tally’s Electric. As can be seen by comparing map with old and new photos, the Liberty Theatre building backed (and backs?) up to the side wall of the Hotel Bisbee (aka Hotel Manhattan) on 3rd Street, but the room labeled “Theatre” on your map is a bit farther north than that. So there were two theatres on that section of that block of Main Street. Puzzling.
vokoban: I just checked your Flickr posts and it certainly looks as though the surviving building on Main Street at what is now the corner of 3rd could be the Liberty Theatre (and thus maybe Tally’s Electric), minus its front section. It’s the right size and shape, and looks as though it’s in the right location. The building depicted as the Liberty is either that one or was the vanished building immediately south of it.
Again, I’ve checked the two photos of the Liberty at Brent Dickerson’s page and I’m now quite sure that the truncated corner building still standing at the northeast corner 3rd and Main is at least on what’s left of the lot once occupied by the Liberty Theatre, and may be the same building. A hidden landmark!
Tally’s Electric on Main Street doesn’t yet have a listing at Cinema Treasures. But there is what I’m pretty sure is a picture of it when it was called the Liberty Theatre. That page gives the Liberty’s address as 136 S. Main, but the photo on the page depicts a building which can be seen at the east end of 3rd street in some other old photos of the area. The Liberty name must have belonged to more than one theatre at various times. See my recent comment on that page for the explanation of why I think the picture may depict Tally’s Electric Theatre some time after he left Main Street.
ScottS: Finding the exact address of the pictured theatre would be very useful. I think it’s likely that there was indeed a Liberty Theatre at 136 S. Main Street, maybe operated by the same people who operated the Liberty Theatre in the photo above. But the photo is certainly the theatre on the east side of Main just a bit north of 3rd, unless the two buildings were identical twins.
There’s a possibility that this building was the location of Tally’s Electric Theatre, opened in 1902. The information currently at the top of the Tally’s Electric Theatre page is in the wrong place. The address given for the theatre there is actually that of Tally’s Phonograph Parlors on Spring Street (where he began showing movies in a small back room in 1896), while the theatre described in the opening section is the one Talley opened on Main Street in 1902, which was probably the first building ever erected specifically as a movie theatre anywhere.
According to MagicLantern’s comment on that page, the address of Tally’s Electric Theatre was 262 S. Main Street. It had to be close to the south end of the block. Before it was rerouted, 3rd Street jogged at Main Street. The block on the west side of Main Street from 2nd to 3rd was the standard length of a downtown block, 600 feet, but the block on the east side of the street was longer. Tally’s Electric must have been in that area. The northeast corner of 3rd and Main was occupied by the Grey Hotel. In that photo, there are low buildings just north of the hotel, but the side wall of a two story building can be seen at far left. I think that’s probably the south wall of the theatre. This photo is a bit too blurry to be sure, but it seems to me that the street number on the awning of the confectionery shop at center is 276, and the street number on the northernmost shop in the hotel building looks like 270. If that’s right, and the two story building at left is the theatre, then 262 would be a likely address for it. By 1910, when the postcard picture at the top of this page was made, the low building to the south would have been replaced by the two story building pictured.
I’m not sure when Third Street was finally connected directly across Main Street (probably no later than the 1930s), but at that time the Grey Hotel and its near neighbors were demolished to make way for the angled section of Third Street. It seems probable that the theatre, being directly east of the western section of Third Street, was knocked down too. The Chinese and Novelty Theatres mentioned in MagicLantern’s comment above were probably at 136 S. Main, and thus not in building pictured.
ScottS: PE first used the Butterfly paint scheme in 1939, according to both ERHA and the Seashore Trolly Museum’s web pages. I still suspect the most likely date to be between 1942-1945, when gasoline was rationed and traffic was thin. It could be as late as the early 1950s, when Metropolitan Coach Lines took over PE’s passenger services, but that seems less likely. The theatre marquee also gives a clue. “ATURE” is likely Victor Mature, and “ABLE” likely Betty Grable. They were teamed in the late 1941 release I Wake Up Screaming. They also appeared together in the 1942 movie Song of the Islands. They teamed again for Footlight Serenade, released later that same year. But they whey were also teamed in Wabash Avenue, released in 1950, so it isn’t conclusive evidence.
ken mc: The Main was in the Canadian Building, next door to the building with the marquee. I think the theatre must be the Regent, before its remodeling. See your own photo from January 2007 above for comparison.
The Hidalgo is the theatre posted on Cinema Treasures under its later name, the Estella. It was next to the Plaza church on North Main Street.
Somebody was asking for information about the Hidalgo just a couple of weeks ago. The question is on the Grand Theatre page. I left a reply with what little I knew, but there’s been no response yet. You could post the link to the Hidalgo there, in case the person comes back.
I’m glad to help, but do notice that I got those dates wrong. Most of the palace was actually built between 1353 and 1391. The Moors had already been driven out of Spain by 1533.
An interesting question. Ultimately, all Alhambra Theatres are named after the original Alhambra, a Moorish palace near Granada, Spain (lots of theatres are named Granada, too.) Most of the palace was built between 1533 and 1553. Here is a web page about it.
The name Alhambra means Red Castle in Arabic. The original Alhambra was the subject of a popular book by American author Washington Irving in the mid 19th century. Irving portrayed the palace and its gardens in a very romantic way, and that romanticism probably had a lot to do with making the name popular with theatre builders. Irving’s book is now in the public domain and can be read on-line.