Muse Theatre
417 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
417 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
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Here’s a great color shot from the 50’s taken from the Huntington Library site:
http://hdl.huntington.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15150coll2/id/8656/rec/1
This is the location today:
http://tinyurl.com/ysdfz5
The names of these two buildings are somewhat confusing.
The Rosslyn and The Rosslyn Annex are owned by two separate parties now. The Rosslyn Hotel (formerly the Rosslyn Annex) is still an SRO hotel and will probably remain so. The original Rosslyn, recently called the Frontier Hotel and now called the Rosslyn Lofts, has been converted to market rate (read: too expensive for poor people to afford) lofts on the top three floors. The remaining nine floors will be renovated, but will remain as “affordable housing.” This building was recently purchased by Amerland, who also purchased (and are renovating) the Alexandria Hotel a block over. Both buildings have art galleries on the ground floor and are Ground Zero of “Gallery Row.”
The Muse was advertised in the LA Times on 9/6/25. Address was 417 S. Main.
The Rosslyn is being remodeled for lofts.
Here is a map, circa 1950, which shows the location of the Muse and Rosslyn theaters:
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/subwayarea.htm
You should see that corner now Joe. There is still a seedy element, but there are many galleries and a few nice restaurants. I was there at 10pm and felt perfectly safe. The Rosslyn Annex is still a flop house, but I’m sure not for much longer.
The Muse, at 417 S. Main, was a few doors north of the Rosslyn Hotel’s original building. The Rosslyn Theatre, at 431 S. Main was probably either in the old hotel building itself, or right next to it. I’ve never seen any trace of either theatre in period pictures of Main Street, and they were both fairly small, so I suspect that both were in converted retail space and probably didn’t have proper marquees. Both were still open into the early 1950’s, so there were plenty of chances for them to show up in photographs. I still hope to stumble across a picture that includes one or both of them someday.
My mind boggles at the thought that the Rosslyn Hotel has been converted to lofts.
You’re right Joe. I looked at some lofts in the “new” Rosslyn Hotel a few weeks ago on the northwest corner. The southwest corner would be the Rosslyn Hotel Annex. Pretty nice lofts after they ripped out all the filth. They did a wonderful job with the lobby also. I’ve found many pictures of the first small Rosslyn Hotel, but I couldn’t figure out where it actually was. Are you saying that the Rosslyn Theater was the same theater as the Muse, or am I confused?
I think the RTD building extended north from about mid-block, and there was a multi-level garage between it and the Rosslyn Hotel’s north building. The Rosslyn Hotel, in the late 19th century, was in a four story building just south of mid-block. Then they took over another hotel in a taller building immediately south of that, and then built their first tower building on the northwest corner of 5th and Main in 1914-1915. I think the building on the southwest corner of 5th and Main was built in 1921 or 1922. The Rosslyn Theatre was most likely located in converted retail space in the earliest Rosslyn Hotel building, now the garage site. The Muse was north of that, where the RTD building was later built.
I remember visiting the RTD headquarters a couple of times in the mid-1980’s, to speak to the customer relations representatives about problems with particular bus routes. It was indeed like going into a bunker. There were armed guards in the lobby, and visitors had to sign in, and they had to wear an authorization tag while they were in the building. The atmosphere was oppressive. I doubt that many customers ever bothered to come in to report problems, not only because of the seedy location on decayed and half-vacant Main Street, but because of the almost paranoid atmosphere inside the building. I suspect that this building was one of the factors that caused the RTD’s management to get so completely out of touch with the bus system’s users.
Would it have been next door to the Rosslyn Hotel Annex?
Unless it’s been re-developed in the last decade, this spot along with the Rosslyn was the site of the Los Angeles Rapid Transit District headquarters (prior to it becoming the MTA). It was a horrible bunker of a building, with virtually no windows that led to something of a seige mentality among the employees. Yeah, I spent close to a decade working in this crappy box.
There is absolutely no sign whatsoever that there was ever a theatre or two on the sight.
This article doesn’t name the theater, but I assume it is the Muse because of the address:
(March 7, 1937)
Two pistol shots which were not part of the sound effects stopped the running of a motion picture in an all-night theater at 417 South Main street early yesterday morning. Employees of the place investigated and found Jack D. Riley, 58 years of age of 3311 South Grand avenue, behind the screen with two bullet wounds in the head. Still conscious, although one of the bullets had passed through his head, Riley told Detective Lieutenant Bryan he had shot himself because of ill health and financial difficulties, according to Bryan’s report.
Correction to my previous post;
The 1950 and 1952 editions of F.D.Y. give a seating capacity of 270.
The Film Daily Yearbook’s 1941 and 1943 give a seating capacity of 400 for the Muse Theatre. In the 1950 and 1952 editions on F.D.Y. it is 470 seats.
The site of the Muse, together with its close neighbor theatre the Rosslyn has been developed and a parking structure built on the land.