Why would anyone would imagine Bronxville, NY to be the same as Bronx, NY?
Since no one indicated any confusion to begin with, I don’t get the point of posting just to emphasize this distinction — other than to hint at how dissimilar they are for the benefit of those who would be comfortable in Bronxville but wouldn’t go near the Bronx.
The demographics may be different from Bronxville, but the Bronx is a beautiful place in its own right.
In the late 1970s, I lived on Burnside Avenue in the first apartment house north of Wilshire. It’s a beautiful Spanish revival building, which has since been landmarked and rightfully so. The units boasted ornamental fireplaces, beamed ceilings, french doors, and bathrooms with hand-painted tiles of a different color and design in each apartment. My rent was $125 a month.
My place faced the parking lot in back of the buildings along Wilshire, which of course included the El Rey Theater. The Miracle Mile had not yet been rediscovered as a desirable residential location, and the retail stores that gave that originally gave that stretch of Wilshire its name were long in decline (with the exception only of the May Company and Ohrbach’s, both at the corner of Fairfax). The Bond clothing store had already been vacated and had become a discount electronics store called Adrays. Desmond’s and Silverwood’s were clinging to life (though in fairness I believe that their locations on Crenshaw south of Santa Barbara were doing even worse). Silverwood’s had an extraordinarily detailed neon sign incorporating the Hart Schaffner Marx logo.
My years in that neighborhood were some of the best of my entire life, even though I witnessed one of the saddest episodes in Los Angeles’ architectural heritage from my windows â€" the wanton, unforgivable destruction of Coulter’s Department Store (at that time operating as the Broadway Wilshire). Here’s a pic: View link This has got to be L.A.’s second-greatest loss from the art deco period (after the Richfield Building).
The underside of a structural component, such as a beam, arch, staircase, or cornice; the underside of a part of a building (such as an arch or overhang or beam etc.)
In our context, it’s the underside of the marquee. It seems like an often overlooked component of a theater building, but it’s interesting how soffits vary individually in their use of sometimes elaborate incandescent lights, neon, etc.
Two of the most elaborate soffits I’m aware of are those of the Warner Cinerama/Hollywood Pacific and the Pantages in Hollywood. They are gorgeous — coffered and detailed — either of wood or crafted to look like it. That of the Pantages was hidden for many years by a horrid dropped ceiling with spotlights. This was during the unfortunate remodeling that moved the ticket booth to a sidewall of the outer lobby. Comments on the page for the Pantages indicate that the original coffered soffit has been uncovered.
I would love to know what other cinema fans' favorite soffits are!
I just remembered something else. It was common to refer to this theater locally as the “Whittier Walk-In” to distinguish it from the Whittier Drive-In /theaters/3822/, just one town away and also on Whittier Boulevard.
I’m not sure in what year the City of Beverly Hills changed the regulations with regard to signage, but the oil derrick-style tower on top of the building survived into the Pacific years. The WARNER letters were capped to spell out PACIFIC in the same manner as atop the Warner Cinerama/Hollywood Pacific.
I just noticed that the address given above “1410 West Whittier Boulevard” is deceiving for anyone seeking out that location today. Whittier originally had its own block-numbering system, emanating N-S-E-W from the corner of Greenleaf and Philadelphia, but renumbered every address in the 1960s to conform to the Los Angeles county-wide numbering system. So, while 1410 West Whittier Boulevard would have been the theater’s original address, the current address of the site would be a five-digit number on East Whittier Boulevard.
Whoa!! When I first looked at those pictures, I wondered “What’s that thing in the middle of the courtyard?” (It looks like something that skateboarders would use as a prop.) Then I realized it’s the soffit of the marquee! Oh geez, how sad.
I probably went to the Whittier more than any other local theater when I was a kid. As another poster mentioned, I too was completely captivated by the ersatz Mexican village along the walls and the moving clouds on the ceiling. Of course, I had no idea what an “atmospheric” theater was back then; I actually thought that the decorative elements along the wall were real, and somehow physically connected to the outside of the theater (which of course had the same theme).
The retail stores in the plaza never seemed to be successful. I remember a drug store and a furniture store being there at various times. Perhaps that was a consequence of the rather odd location of the theater. Whittier Boulevard had been U.S. 101 before being bypassed by the Santa Ana Freeway in the 1950s, but this was a fairly non-descript stretch of road and certainly not a hub of local retail and commercial activity.
As the picture above shows, the Whittier was at one time part of a local chain called Bruen’s. They also operated the Wardman and the Roxy in Uptown Whittier, and the Sundown Drive-In. Only the Wardman survives, as the Whittier Village Cinemas multiplex.
Thankfully, the reopening of Loews Paradise did get some more local media coverage in the past week. There were articles in the Daily News and the Post plus a story on NY1 news, our local 24-hour cable news channel.
The NY1 segment had brief interviews with Adolfo Carrión (Bronx Borough President) and Lloyd Ultan, a historian who’s written extensively on Bronx history. The shots weren’t too great, though. They showed the marquee, the lobby, and the balcony. You couldn’t even see the entire proscenium, so the auditorium wasn’t shown to its best advantage.
I’m wondering if the lack of a traditional marquee could at this point hamper the prosperity of the Paradise, simply because there’s no place to advertise upcoming acts. Would the installation of tracks to hold letters, or some other tasteful kind of signboard, be feasible in the lower half of the scroll? (Or could it even be possible given that the exterior is landmarked?)
Finally, is anyone familiar enough with the renovation of the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles to know if it is considered a success? I know that the Orpheum has hosted a couple of movie premieres, but when I’ve visited their website www.laorpheum.com it hasn’t seemed like much was going on there and that the programs have been fairly few and far between. I mention this just because there are some similarities between the Orpheum and Paradise projects, and because another poster had expressed reservations about the prospects for enough bookings to keep the Paradise open.
I stumbled upon the Forum by accident back in the 1970s. The edifice is so striking that I had to park, get out of my car, and get a closer look.
I recall looking for information about the Forum and seeing drawings of it, inside and out, at the Los Angeles Public Library downtown. (Back then, images that are now available digitally from the LAPL website could seen in hard-copy form.) The auditorium looked interesting, all on one level and circular rather than rectangular. I don’t recall the decor, other than perhaps murals on the walls.
This was so long ago that I’m not sure if my recollection of those drawings is accurate. Has anyone who’s been inside the auditorium describe it? (If I still lived in L.A., I’d definitely attend a church service to find out for myself!)
Thanks for the perspective, Jim. I just hadn’t heard any new buzz about thematic decor or incorporating extra moneymakers. I thought those were issues that had been considered in the past.
For example, the decor of the Loews Lincoln Square multiplex in Manhattan /theaters/7222/ did indeed make an earnest effort to replicate some of the movie palace experience. It’s been open for over 10 years and it certainly seems to be a success, but I’m not sure that the decoration aspect represents a particular draw for most patrons. (To the general public, I believe that the presence of an IMAX theater would be considered the primary distinguishing feature of this multiplex.)
And as for restaurants, skating, etc., hasn’t the “multiplex at the mall” always such distractions?
“I heard a report that there may be a come back of the movie palaces of old.”
“To lure back audiences from their home set ups some theatre owners plan to revamp themselves into the old style decor including resteraunts, skating and bowling added to their theatres to make for a complete going out experience.”
I believe that the second statement is a non sequitur. How would a refurbished shoebox, revamped in “old style decor”, presage a “come back of the movie palaces of old”? What does it have to do with real movie palaces at all?
The pre-restoration marquee of the Hippodrome appears a number of times in the John Waters film “Cecil B. Demented”. There’s some space before the word “HIPPODROME”, as though another word had been removed. My guess was that it had been a chain name like RKO, Loew’s, etc., but it’s not clear from the comments above what it might have been. Does anyone know?
The unfortunate confusion is compounded by the fact that the Warner (later Pacific) Beverly Hills Theater was indeed known as The Beverly in its last years, as a couple of earlier comments mention. It was a venue for live music acts, and could have continued as a splendid mid-sized concert hall.
I saw Parliament/Funkadelic there in the early 1980s. And though that act wasn’t necessarily representative of the bookings, I can just imagine the civic leaders in a tizzy over the element that the live shows brought to downtown B.H.
Jim, thank you for stepping forward (and jarring my memory). By the way, I absolutely meant no offense with the phrase “bent out of shape”; I should have chosen my own words more carefully and less casually.
For the record, which theater was it that has “decadent” in its description and to which you responded earlier?
Well, the website is greatly improved. The seating chart, in particular, is interesting in that it illustrates the view of the stage from each sector of the auditorium.
Is anyone else troubled by the repeated use of the word “grandiose” to describe the Paradise in its own website? In its strictest sense, the word is synonymous with “grand” — but that’s not what’s usually implied, which it is far from complimentary. From dictionary.com:
Characterized by greatness of scope or intent; grand.
Characterized by feigned or affected grandeur; pompous.
Characterized by affectation of grandeur or splendor or by absurd exaggeration.
Impressive because of unnecessary largeness or grandeur; used to show disapproval.
In some other theater’s description here (which I can’t recall at the moment), the word “decadent” was carelessly used and someone else got all bent out of shape over that. This usage of “grandiose” is similarly sloppy and unfortunate.
To me, an important part of any streetscape is the lighting. The old ornamental two- and three-headed lamps were beautiful; the plain hanging-acorn-style ones that replaced them on Broadway are not.
Funny that the nice ones were maintained on other streets decades after they were removed from Broadway. Now I’m certainly not saying this caused or hastened the decline of the street as a middle-class shopping and entertainment destination, but, really, what were the city planners thinking by taking such an action?
I remember passing the forlorn marquee of this abandoned neighborhood theater in the Boyle Heights/City Terrace section of Los Angeles decades ago.
I’m surprised at the lack of commentary here, considering the lively discussions on the pages for the Golden Gate and other East Los Angeles theaters, and also considering the expertise of those regulars who seem to know technical details about practically every theater!
At least they do have it listed as a venue, albeit with the incorrect zip code.
Speaking of the Loews 175th, I find it interesting that I’ve lived in that neighborhood for 12 years and have never seen advertising for any event there.
Website still “under construction” (with essentially zero information), with a grand re-opening planned for three weeks away?
“Life’s too short” says: “Looks like the people running the place have a unique and interesting business model.” What do you base this opinion on?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Something is “not quite right” about this entire situation. No coverage in local media. No (real) website. A unique and interesting business model? I’ll say!
For ken mc: Warners Hollywood > Warners Cinerama > Hollywood Pacific > Pacific 1-2-3. It’s already listed as one of your favorites: /theaters/18/
Why would anyone would imagine Bronxville, NY to be the same as Bronx, NY?
Since no one indicated any confusion to begin with, I don’t get the point of posting just to emphasize this distinction — other than to hint at how dissimilar they are for the benefit of those who would be comfortable in Bronxville but wouldn’t go near the Bronx.
The demographics may be different from Bronxville, but the Bronx is a beautiful place in its own right.
This is from the first paragraph of the article about Voskanian in the Downtown News:
“Built in 1918, the 2,345-seat former movie house was gutted in the 1990s and later turned into a church.”
Gutted? If that’s true, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. And how precisely does a movie palace get “turned into” a church?
In the late 1970s, I lived on Burnside Avenue in the first apartment house north of Wilshire. It’s a beautiful Spanish revival building, which has since been landmarked and rightfully so. The units boasted ornamental fireplaces, beamed ceilings, french doors, and bathrooms with hand-painted tiles of a different color and design in each apartment. My rent was $125 a month.
My place faced the parking lot in back of the buildings along Wilshire, which of course included the El Rey Theater. The Miracle Mile had not yet been rediscovered as a desirable residential location, and the retail stores that gave that originally gave that stretch of Wilshire its name were long in decline (with the exception only of the May Company and Ohrbach’s, both at the corner of Fairfax). The Bond clothing store had already been vacated and had become a discount electronics store called Adrays. Desmond’s and Silverwood’s were clinging to life (though in fairness I believe that their locations on Crenshaw south of Santa Barbara were doing even worse). Silverwood’s had an extraordinarily detailed neon sign incorporating the Hart Schaffner Marx logo.
My years in that neighborhood were some of the best of my entire life, even though I witnessed one of the saddest episodes in Los Angeles’ architectural heritage from my windows â€" the wanton, unforgivable destruction of Coulter’s Department Store (at that time operating as the Broadway Wilshire). Here’s a pic: View link This has got to be L.A.’s second-greatest loss from the art deco period (after the Richfield Building).
In ken mc’s first pic, notice the painted sign on the side of the building that says “The Pride of Beverly Hills”. Yeah, right. Once upon a time.
From www.dictionary.com:
The underside of a structural component, such as a beam, arch, staircase, or cornice; the underside of a part of a building (such as an arch or overhang or beam etc.)
In our context, it’s the underside of the marquee. It seems like an often overlooked component of a theater building, but it’s interesting how soffits vary individually in their use of sometimes elaborate incandescent lights, neon, etc.
Two of the most elaborate soffits I’m aware of are those of the Warner Cinerama/Hollywood Pacific and the Pantages in Hollywood. They are gorgeous — coffered and detailed — either of wood or crafted to look like it. That of the Pantages was hidden for many years by a horrid dropped ceiling with spotlights. This was during the unfortunate remodeling that moved the ticket booth to a sidewall of the outer lobby. Comments on the page for the Pantages indicate that the original coffered soffit has been uncovered.
I would love to know what other cinema fans' favorite soffits are!
I just remembered something else. It was common to refer to this theater locally as the “Whittier Walk-In” to distinguish it from the Whittier Drive-In /theaters/3822/, just one town away and also on Whittier Boulevard.
I’m not sure in what year the City of Beverly Hills changed the regulations with regard to signage, but the oil derrick-style tower on top of the building survived into the Pacific years. The WARNER letters were capped to spell out PACIFIC in the same manner as atop the Warner Cinerama/Hollywood Pacific.
I just noticed that the address given above “1410 West Whittier Boulevard” is deceiving for anyone seeking out that location today. Whittier originally had its own block-numbering system, emanating N-S-E-W from the corner of Greenleaf and Philadelphia, but renumbered every address in the 1960s to conform to the Los Angeles county-wide numbering system. So, while 1410 West Whittier Boulevard would have been the theater’s original address, the current address of the site would be a five-digit number on East Whittier Boulevard.
Whoa!! When I first looked at those pictures, I wondered “What’s that thing in the middle of the courtyard?” (It looks like something that skateboarders would use as a prop.) Then I realized it’s the soffit of the marquee! Oh geez, how sad.
I probably went to the Whittier more than any other local theater when I was a kid. As another poster mentioned, I too was completely captivated by the ersatz Mexican village along the walls and the moving clouds on the ceiling. Of course, I had no idea what an “atmospheric” theater was back then; I actually thought that the decorative elements along the wall were real, and somehow physically connected to the outside of the theater (which of course had the same theme).
The retail stores in the plaza never seemed to be successful. I remember a drug store and a furniture store being there at various times. Perhaps that was a consequence of the rather odd location of the theater. Whittier Boulevard had been U.S. 101 before being bypassed by the Santa Ana Freeway in the 1950s, but this was a fairly non-descript stretch of road and certainly not a hub of local retail and commercial activity.
As the picture above shows, the Whittier was at one time part of a local chain called Bruen’s. They also operated the Wardman and the Roxy in Uptown Whittier, and the Sundown Drive-In. Only the Wardman survives, as the Whittier Village Cinemas multiplex.
Thankfully, the reopening of Loews Paradise did get some more local media coverage in the past week. There were articles in the Daily News and the Post plus a story on NY1 news, our local 24-hour cable news channel.
The NY1 segment had brief interviews with Adolfo Carrión (Bronx Borough President) and Lloyd Ultan, a historian who’s written extensively on Bronx history. The shots weren’t too great, though. They showed the marquee, the lobby, and the balcony. You couldn’t even see the entire proscenium, so the auditorium wasn’t shown to its best advantage.
I’m wondering if the lack of a traditional marquee could at this point hamper the prosperity of the Paradise, simply because there’s no place to advertise upcoming acts. Would the installation of tracks to hold letters, or some other tasteful kind of signboard, be feasible in the lower half of the scroll? (Or could it even be possible given that the exterior is landmarked?)
Finally, is anyone familiar enough with the renovation of the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles to know if it is considered a success? I know that the Orpheum has hosted a couple of movie premieres, but when I’ve visited their website www.laorpheum.com it hasn’t seemed like much was going on there and that the programs have been fairly few and far between. I mention this just because there are some similarities between the Orpheum and Paradise projects, and because another poster had expressed reservations about the prospects for enough bookings to keep the Paradise open.
I stumbled upon the Forum by accident back in the 1970s. The edifice is so striking that I had to park, get out of my car, and get a closer look.
I recall looking for information about the Forum and seeing drawings of it, inside and out, at the Los Angeles Public Library downtown. (Back then, images that are now available digitally from the LAPL website could seen in hard-copy form.) The auditorium looked interesting, all on one level and circular rather than rectangular. I don’t recall the decor, other than perhaps murals on the walls.
This was so long ago that I’m not sure if my recollection of those drawings is accurate. Has anyone who’s been inside the auditorium describe it? (If I still lived in L.A., I’d definitely attend a church service to find out for myself!)
Thanks for the perspective, Jim. I just hadn’t heard any new buzz about thematic decor or incorporating extra moneymakers. I thought those were issues that had been considered in the past.
For example, the decor of the Loews Lincoln Square multiplex in Manhattan /theaters/7222/ did indeed make an earnest effort to replicate some of the movie palace experience. It’s been open for over 10 years and it certainly seems to be a success, but I’m not sure that the decoration aspect represents a particular draw for most patrons. (To the general public, I believe that the presence of an IMAX theater would be considered the primary distinguishing feature of this multiplex.)
And as for restaurants, skating, etc., hasn’t the “multiplex at the mall” always such distractions?
“I heard a report that there may be a come back of the movie palaces of old.”
“To lure back audiences from their home set ups some theatre owners plan to revamp themselves into the old style decor including resteraunts, skating and bowling added to their theatres to make for a complete going out experience.”
I believe that the second statement is a non sequitur. How would a refurbished shoebox, revamped in “old style decor”, presage a “come back of the movie palaces of old”? What does it have to do with real movie palaces at all?
The pre-restoration marquee of the Hippodrome appears a number of times in the John Waters film “Cecil B. Demented”. There’s some space before the word “HIPPODROME”, as though another word had been removed. My guess was that it had been a chain name like RKO, Loew’s, etc., but it’s not clear from the comments above what it might have been. Does anyone know?
I found a pic:
View link
Ken, that shot is one of my favorites. It’s actually a postcard, and occasionally comes up for auction on eBay.
Pretty odd to see “Barbara Geddes” on the marquee in the pic above. Do you suppose they thought “Bel” was her middle name?
The unfortunate confusion is compounded by the fact that the Warner (later Pacific) Beverly Hills Theater was indeed known as The Beverly in its last years, as a couple of earlier comments mention. It was a venue for live music acts, and could have continued as a splendid mid-sized concert hall.
I saw Parliament/Funkadelic there in the early 1980s. And though that act wasn’t necessarily representative of the bookings, I can just imagine the civic leaders in a tizzy over the element that the live shows brought to downtown B.H.
Jim, thank you for stepping forward (and jarring my memory). By the way, I absolutely meant no offense with the phrase “bent out of shape”; I should have chosen my own words more carefully and less casually.
For the record, which theater was it that has “decadent” in its description and to which you responded earlier?
Well, the website is greatly improved. The seating chart, in particular, is interesting in that it illustrates the view of the stage from each sector of the auditorium.
Is anyone else troubled by the repeated use of the word “grandiose” to describe the Paradise in its own website? In its strictest sense, the word is synonymous with “grand” — but that’s not what’s usually implied, which it is far from complimentary. From dictionary.com:
Characterized by greatness of scope or intent; grand.
Characterized by feigned or affected grandeur; pompous.
Characterized by affectation of grandeur or splendor or by absurd exaggeration.
Impressive because of unnecessary largeness or grandeur; used to show disapproval.
In some other theater’s description here (which I can’t recall at the moment), the word “decadent” was carelessly used and someone else got all bent out of shape over that. This usage of “grandiose” is similarly sloppy and unfortunate.
During the Metropolitan years, this theater was called WARRENS (not WARREN). Just a minor detail perhaps worth mentioning.
To me, an important part of any streetscape is the lighting. The old ornamental two- and three-headed lamps were beautiful; the plain hanging-acorn-style ones that replaced them on Broadway are not.
Funny that the nice ones were maintained on other streets decades after they were removed from Broadway. Now I’m certainly not saying this caused or hastened the decline of the street as a middle-class shopping and entertainment destination, but, really, what were the city planners thinking by taking such an action?
I remember passing the forlorn marquee of this abandoned neighborhood theater in the Boyle Heights/City Terrace section of Los Angeles decades ago.
I’m surprised at the lack of commentary here, considering the lively discussions on the pages for the Golden Gate and other East Los Angeles theaters, and also considering the expertise of those regulars who seem to know technical details about practically every theater!
At least they do have it listed as a venue, albeit with the incorrect zip code.
Speaking of the Loews 175th, I find it interesting that I’ve lived in that neighborhood for 12 years and have never seen advertising for any event there.
Where are the promoters for this venue?
Website still “under construction” (with essentially zero information), with a grand re-opening planned for three weeks away?
“Life’s too short” says: “Looks like the people running the place have a unique and interesting business model.” What do you base this opinion on?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Something is “not quite right” about this entire situation. No coverage in local media. No (real) website. A unique and interesting business model? I’ll say!