Carlsbad Village Theatre

Website of current owner:

http://www.carlsbadvillagetheatre.com/

Contains a few pictures of renovated auditorium.

From the LA Times, 3/3/90:

Carlsbad Theater Won’t Be Razed

The owners of the vaudeville-era Carlsbad Theater indicated this week that they have dropped plans to demolish the 63-year-old building and are negotiating to reopen it as a movie house showing classic films.

The Normandins threatened to seek a city demolition permit, believing that state law required all unreinforced masonry buildings like theirs to be strengthened by next year. The family argued that they couldn’t afford such expensive earthquake renovation and would lose their liability insurance on the property if they didn’t comply with the law.

I’ve searched all the usual sources and can’t find any references to either Roy Chase or R.E. Struve as architects, and few references to them of any sort. The California Index contains one card citing a 1928 L.A. Times article saying that R.E. Struve was financing the construction of a building at Encinitas, and there’s a PDF about the coast highway citing a couple of 1925 Oceanside Blade articles saying that Roy Chase had built a hotel there. As far as I’ve been able to discover, neither Chase nor Struve was an architect, but both were local developers.

Until some convincing evidence turns up, I’m inclined to say that the actual architect of this theater remains unknown.