I just realized that the Panorama’s dark, round roof is partly visible in this old favorite photo, too, sticking up from behind the King Edward Hotel at extreme right.
I remember now that I’d previously seen that picture I linked to, but it had never dawned on me that the Panorama Building was in it. I was focusing on Main Street or on the overall view, and didn’t notice the details off to the side.
Here’s a ca.1910 aerial photo showing the Hippodrome site vacant except for what might be either rubble or construction materials (the dark, round thing might even be the remains of the panorama’s foundation), so I’m sure the whole rear portion of the Panorama Building was demolished to make way for the Hippodrome’s auditorium, but I’ve wondered myself if the front building that later housed the Main Street Gym wasn’t merely remodeled from the earlier building on the site.
The Empire is still pretty much a mystery. So fa it hasn’t appeared among the movie houses advertised in newspapers of the time, or in the lists of movie houses in early city directories unearthed so far. Maybe it was exclusively a live venue. Its odd location probably accounts for its early demise as a theatre of any sort though. A few blocks east and it probably could have survived as a neighborhood movie house for quite a while, and up the block at the corner of Main it would have been solidly ensconced at the head of the theatre district that didn’t begin to undergo serious shrinkage until the 1940s.
I must have stopped getting e-mail notifications of new comments on this page several months ago. I’ve missed about three months of comments.
Anyway, here’s news about the Panorama Building, which preceded the Hippodrome Theatre on the Main Street site. It turns out that Panoramas were a huge business in the 19th century, and many cities had buildings erected specifically for their display. Here’s a fairly long and detailed review of a 1997 book about this vanished form of what today would probably be called infotainment.
Almost as good, I finally tracked down a photo which shows at least the top and part of the south side of the big, round Panorama Building itself, here at the USC digital archive, not surprisingly. The Panorama Building is a couple of blocks distant in this view, at far right, partly concealed by the Westminster Hotel and other buildings along East 4th Street.
The photo dates from New Year’s Day of 1907, so it was taken during the building’s last era, when it was being used as a skating rink. According to the Los Angeles Daily Journal of August 15, 1907, Adolph Ramish had been issued a permit to demolish the structure.
There was at least one building that was declared a cultural-historic monument by the City of Los Angeles when it was only 42 years old; the 1958 Holiday Bowl on Crenshaw, by Armet & Davis, was declared in 2000. Unfortunately, the declaration was not enough to save the place and it was demolished in 2003. There may be other buildings that were declared when they were even newer, but I’m unaware of them.
It’s possible that declaring buildings so recent has actually emboldened owners of interesting, potentially landmarkable structures to try to get rid of them or drastically alter them before they get to the age where they might be declared. Maybe that’s why the owners of the National are so eager to tear it down now. In a few years years there might be so many supporters of landmarking the building that it would be too late for the owners to easily get a permit to demolish it.
The building lots on the west side of the 700 block of S. Main Street are not very deep. A theatre at 729 S. would have very pretty small unless the building went through to Spring Street. I still think the 729 S. Main location may have been Clune’s offices rather than one of his theatres, but it’s also possible that it was the site of a very early precursor of his bigger theatres, and maybe even of his first nickelodeon.
Also, I’ve found some evidence that the Rosslyn’s 5th and Main building opened in 1915. It was planned as early as 1911, but construction apparently didn’t get underway until early 1914. Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main had a very short run indeed.
Or I might have overlooked it, since I keep forgetting to enlarge the page in my browser when reading that pale text (I wish it had a “darken” function as well as the enlarging function.)
The 1930s photo I linked to on October 12, 2006, showing the theatre when it was called the Studio, has vanished from the USC digital archives altogether. Maybe the archives lost track of it when they were redesigning their website. Fortunately, there’s still a photo from the L.A. library showing the theatre’s marquee when it was called the Studio. It’s essentially the same as the Mirror marquee in the picture ken mc linked to on November 8 of this year.
This creates a bit of a problem with the time-line of the theatre.
S. Charles Lee’s plans for remodeling the Mirror into the Studio, including adding a new marquee, were announced in 1936, and it looks like this marquee already existed by 1936. So did Lee not design a new marquee after all, or was the rather austere CBS Radio Playhouse marquee the one he designed in 1936, or do we just not yet have a photo of his short-lived marquee?
Yes, it was the Huntington Hartford Theatre for some thirty years, from 1954 until at least 1984, longer than it bore any of its other names. It was Hartford who caused the original facade to be stripped away and replaced with the bland exterior the building wore for most of its history. The interior was gutted at that same time. The current facade is more a homage to than an actual recreation of the original that was lost to Hartford’s remodeling. For all practical purposes, none of Myron Hunt’s original work on the Vine Street Theatre remains.
The Doolittle name was in honor of James Doolittle, an impresario who for many years programed the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, and then programmed the Hartford itself for a while starting in the mid-1960s. I think the theatre was called the Doolittle for about a dozen years.
Also missing is the one aka under which this house operated exclusively as a movie theatre, the Mirror Theatre. I’m sure that Lux Radio Playhouse was not an actual name the theatre itself bore, but was merely the name of one of the programs CBS broadcast from the house during its years as the Studio Theatre (another missing aka) and then as the CBS Radio Playhouse (not CBS Radio Theatre.)
For a full list of the theatre’s names in sequence see Ken Roe’s comment of January 1, 2005 above.
Most likely the luggage store now sprawls through several buildings. I noticed that in the Flickr photo you linked to there’s an arrow marked “Entrance” pointing south above the door where the theatre’s foyer once was.
Also I’m not positive about the Valley West name as an aka. Lavar reported it only as a rumor, and I haven’t found any confirmation anywhere. In the 1966 ad ken mc linked to it’s the Baronet, and as the building was built in 1961 and the place probably closed not long after August 1986, that doesn’t leave much time for the Valley West name to have been in use, if it ever was.
No, wait, it’s not Woodland Hills. I rechecked the map and Vanowen marks the change from 6700/6800 N block of Topanga Canyon, so the 6900 block remains in Canoga Park.
I should clarify that the theatre was in Canoga Park, but the building’s postal address today is in Woodland Hills due to a change made in 1992. A quarter section bounded by Victory, Vanowen, Topanga and Shoup was withdrawn from Canoga Park and added to Woodland Hills that year.
Boulevard is the name under which the theatre is listed in the L.A. Times Calender section on August 24, 1986. It is showing two features but there’s no indication that it’s a twin theatre. Admission price was $1.50. Quite a few older theatres were still showing double features in 1986, so I’m thinking it was probably a discount double feature house at that time.
In one comment above Lavar says that it closed in 1985, but it was still open in August 1986, so I’d guess that it probably closed not long after then and never got twinned.
Yes, the Baronet is the same theatre as the Boulevard. Boulevard is the more recent name. Comment by Lavar on January 25 above says that it may have been aka the Valley West for a time. Assessor information says the building at 6937-6939 Topanga Canyon was built in 1961. Lavar also pointed out that the theatre was in the Canoga Park district, not the Woodland Hills District.
Joe Vogel
commented about
Mayanon
Nov 24, 2007 at 8:21 am
Don S: The Hill Street Belasco isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures because nobody’s presented any evidence that it was ever used as a movie theatre. In short, it’s a theatrical treasure but not a cinema treasure. In fact I’m not sure it even has a projection room.
However, the Main Street Belasco is listed here under its final name, the Follies.
Two eras of the Meralta, from Flickr user The Downey Conservancy:
A very early photo of the original, 1925 design by architect Evan Jones in a Spanish Colonial style, handsomely executed in what appears to be brick and terra cotta.
A c1950 photo of the facade as remodeled in a restrained, art modern style by architect Clarence Smale. Smale’s 1940s remodel was so good that I can almost forgive its destruction of Jones’s delightful Spanish fantasy.
Assessors information on this building provides a 1913 construction date. Definitely not demolished.
For those curious, the City Planning Department report on the adjacent property (4250-4254 S. Broadway, plus 270 W. 42nd Place) describes that building (the Mission Hotel mentioned by ken mc in his comment of June 10, 2007) as a store-residential combination built in 1911.
The Assessor’s Information in the City Planning Department’s ZIMAS report on the addresses from 2229 to 2241 E. Cesar Chavez Ave. says that the building now on the site is a 12,000+ square foot market that was built in 1963. In the satellite views from TerraServer and Google Maps it does look like a big, modern building. I’d say the National is probably dust.
Also, the theatre was in the Boyle Heights district of the City of Los Angeles, not in the unincorporated community of East Los Angeles.
The National is one of several east side theatres briefly mentioned in Abe Hoffman’s reminiscence about growing up in the 1940s, A Boyle Heights Boyhood.
A 2005 book called “Art Deco Los Angeles”, by Suzanne Tarbell Cooper and Amy Ronnebeck Hall, names Clarence J. Smale as the architect of the Congress Theatre.
Flickr user The Downey Conservancy also provides this aerial photo showing the business district of Downey during the late 1930s. The view is northward across Firestone Boulevard, with Downey Avenue running from lower left toward the upper right. Both the Downey/Victory/Avenue and the Meralta Theatre can be picked out. The Meralta is the larger, more northerly theatre, easily identifiable by its tall, white stage-house.
The Avenue Theatre is a block closer, but built of a darker material, probably red brick, and it sports a very dark roof. The auditorium runs parallel to Downey Avenue and its stage house backs up to 3rd Street. In this photo taken during the early 1960s remodeling of the house, the name Avenue Theatre can be seen on the stage-house wall rising from behind the shops to the left.
The 1960s alterations destroyed an earlier facade remodeling of the Avenue, a plain but handsome bit of modern design depicted in this c1950 ad for Cummings Theatres, which also features a nice shot of the modernized Meralta.
Apparently the Downey Theater in the photo is the one that became the Avenue, after spending some time as the Victory.
The three photos match one another, but they don’t match the description of the proposed theatre published in Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of May 30, 1924, which describes a building of two floors, and situated on the northwest corner of Crawford Street (Downey Avenue) and 2nd St. The previous issue of SwB&C had described the proposed building as being 106' by 140', which certainly doesn’t fit the Downey/Victory/Avenue. The building was supposed to contain a 900 seat theatre, nine storefronts, plus sixteen offices on the second floor. I’m thinking that this 1924 project at 2nd and Crawford must have fallen through.
Another bit of the puzzle is that there was apparently a Downey Theatre in operation before March 13, 1925, as the SwB&C issue of that date announced the plans for a theatre to be erected on 3rd Street in Downey (possibly also unbuilt), and said that the lessee of the new house would be “…L.R. Matthews, listed as owner of the Downey Theatre….” Matthews is mentioned again as owner of the Downey Theatre in another SwB&C article about the same project, published April 10, 1925.
This means that, unless there were two theatres in the town both called the Downey at different times, the Downey/Victory/Avenue almost certainly isn’t the one other theatre proposed for Downey Avenue in 1925, which was a project planned by Mr. Matthews on his own behalf. The SwB&C issue of May 15, 1925, only says that the proposed theatre was on a site occupied by a brick garage owned by the Downey Motor Company, which was to be moved and altered. It might be that this project fell thorough too, unless it was the theatre which eventually became El Teatro.
That leaves one more possible candidate to be the actual Downey/Victory/Avenue Theatre: the proposed theatre mentioned in the November 7, 1919 issue of SwB&C, described only as being financed by Willeford Hogan and designed by Harry Haden Whitely. Of course it’s possible that this 1919 building was the one that became El Teatro, as the SwB&C article gives a proposed seating capacity of only 275 for the house, which certainly doesn’t match the Avenue’s capacity of 850 listed above. Of course the building might have been expanded later.
Here’s a photo of the Tinseltown’s box office area, and this photo is followed in the stream by several pictures of the theatre’s projection equipment.
As can be seen in the photo at the Butte Bible Fellowship website, this rather plain and boxy 1970s-style former triplex has been altered (no pun intended) at one end, so it looks like a church, but the theatre’s original entrance is recognizable around the corner.
A photo of the former Movies 10 as it looks now that it’s been converted into a church appears on the main page of the Calvary Chapel Chico website. They even kept the marquee!
I just realized that the Panorama’s dark, round roof is partly visible in this old favorite photo, too, sticking up from behind the King Edward Hotel at extreme right.
I remember now that I’d previously seen that picture I linked to, but it had never dawned on me that the Panorama Building was in it. I was focusing on Main Street or on the overall view, and didn’t notice the details off to the side.
Here’s a ca.1910 aerial photo showing the Hippodrome site vacant except for what might be either rubble or construction materials (the dark, round thing might even be the remains of the panorama’s foundation), so I’m sure the whole rear portion of the Panorama Building was demolished to make way for the Hippodrome’s auditorium, but I’ve wondered myself if the front building that later housed the Main Street Gym wasn’t merely remodeled from the earlier building on the site.
The Empire is still pretty much a mystery. So fa it hasn’t appeared among the movie houses advertised in newspapers of the time, or in the lists of movie houses in early city directories unearthed so far. Maybe it was exclusively a live venue. Its odd location probably accounts for its early demise as a theatre of any sort though. A few blocks east and it probably could have survived as a neighborhood movie house for quite a while, and up the block at the corner of Main it would have been solidly ensconced at the head of the theatre district that didn’t begin to undergo serious shrinkage until the 1940s.
I must have stopped getting e-mail notifications of new comments on this page several months ago. I’ve missed about three months of comments.
Anyway, here’s news about the Panorama Building, which preceded the Hippodrome Theatre on the Main Street site. It turns out that Panoramas were a huge business in the 19th century, and many cities had buildings erected specifically for their display. Here’s a fairly long and detailed review of a 1997 book about this vanished form of what today would probably be called infotainment.
Almost as good, I finally tracked down a photo which shows at least the top and part of the south side of the big, round Panorama Building itself, here at the USC digital archive, not surprisingly. The Panorama Building is a couple of blocks distant in this view, at far right, partly concealed by the Westminster Hotel and other buildings along East 4th Street.
The photo dates from New Year’s Day of 1907, so it was taken during the building’s last era, when it was being used as a skating rink. According to the Los Angeles Daily Journal of August 15, 1907, Adolph Ramish had been issued a permit to demolish the structure.
There was at least one building that was declared a cultural-historic monument by the City of Los Angeles when it was only 42 years old; the 1958 Holiday Bowl on Crenshaw, by Armet & Davis, was declared in 2000. Unfortunately, the declaration was not enough to save the place and it was demolished in 2003. There may be other buildings that were declared when they were even newer, but I’m unaware of them.
It’s possible that declaring buildings so recent has actually emboldened owners of interesting, potentially landmarkable structures to try to get rid of them or drastically alter them before they get to the age where they might be declared. Maybe that’s why the owners of the National are so eager to tear it down now. In a few years years there might be so many supporters of landmarking the building that it would be too late for the owners to easily get a permit to demolish it.
The building lots on the west side of the 700 block of S. Main Street are not very deep. A theatre at 729 S. would have very pretty small unless the building went through to Spring Street. I still think the 729 S. Main location may have been Clune’s offices rather than one of his theatres, but it’s also possible that it was the site of a very early precursor of his bigger theatres, and maybe even of his first nickelodeon.
Also, I’ve found some evidence that the Rosslyn’s 5th and Main building opened in 1915. It was planned as early as 1911, but construction apparently didn’t get underway until early 1914. Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main had a very short run indeed.
The El Monte was built for Arthur Sanborn, founder of Sanborn Theatres, which today operates using the name The Movie Experience.
Here’s a pre-construction architect’s rendering of the Kuhio Theatre.
Or I might have overlooked it, since I keep forgetting to enlarge the page in my browser when reading that pale text (I wish it had a “darken” function as well as the enlarging function.)
The 1930s photo I linked to on October 12, 2006, showing the theatre when it was called the Studio, has vanished from the USC digital archives altogether. Maybe the archives lost track of it when they were redesigning their website. Fortunately, there’s still a photo from the L.A. library showing the theatre’s marquee when it was called the Studio. It’s essentially the same as the Mirror marquee in the picture ken mc linked to on November 8 of this year.
This creates a bit of a problem with the time-line of the theatre.
S. Charles Lee’s plans for remodeling the Mirror into the Studio, including adding a new marquee, were announced in 1936, and it looks like this marquee already existed by 1936. So did Lee not design a new marquee after all, or was the rather austere CBS Radio Playhouse marquee the one he designed in 1936, or do we just not yet have a photo of his short-lived marquee?
Yes, it was the Huntington Hartford Theatre for some thirty years, from 1954 until at least 1984, longer than it bore any of its other names. It was Hartford who caused the original facade to be stripped away and replaced with the bland exterior the building wore for most of its history. The interior was gutted at that same time. The current facade is more a homage to than an actual recreation of the original that was lost to Hartford’s remodeling. For all practical purposes, none of Myron Hunt’s original work on the Vine Street Theatre remains.
The Doolittle name was in honor of James Doolittle, an impresario who for many years programed the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, and then programmed the Hartford itself for a while starting in the mid-1960s. I think the theatre was called the Doolittle for about a dozen years.
Also missing is the one aka under which this house operated exclusively as a movie theatre, the Mirror Theatre. I’m sure that Lux Radio Playhouse was not an actual name the theatre itself bore, but was merely the name of one of the programs CBS broadcast from the house during its years as the Studio Theatre (another missing aka) and then as the CBS Radio Playhouse (not CBS Radio Theatre.)
For a full list of the theatre’s names in sequence see Ken Roe’s comment of January 1, 2005 above.
BC: The Marina 3 is listed at Cinema Treasures under its original name, the Strand Theater.
Most likely the luggage store now sprawls through several buildings. I noticed that in the Flickr photo you linked to there’s an arrow marked “Entrance” pointing south above the door where the theatre’s foyer once was.
Also I’m not positive about the Valley West name as an aka. Lavar reported it only as a rumor, and I haven’t found any confirmation anywhere. In the 1966 ad ken mc linked to it’s the Baronet, and as the building was built in 1961 and the place probably closed not long after August 1986, that doesn’t leave much time for the Valley West name to have been in use, if it ever was.
No, wait, it’s not Woodland Hills. I rechecked the map and Vanowen marks the change from 6700/6800 N block of Topanga Canyon, so the 6900 block remains in Canoga Park.
I should clarify that the theatre was in Canoga Park, but the building’s postal address today is in Woodland Hills due to a change made in 1992. A quarter section bounded by Victory, Vanowen, Topanga and Shoup was withdrawn from Canoga Park and added to Woodland Hills that year.
Boulevard is the name under which the theatre is listed in the L.A. Times Calender section on August 24, 1986. It is showing two features but there’s no indication that it’s a twin theatre. Admission price was $1.50. Quite a few older theatres were still showing double features in 1986, so I’m thinking it was probably a discount double feature house at that time.
In one comment above Lavar says that it closed in 1985, but it was still open in August 1986, so I’d guess that it probably closed not long after then and never got twinned.
Yes, the Baronet is the same theatre as the Boulevard. Boulevard is the more recent name. Comment by Lavar on January 25 above says that it may have been aka the Valley West for a time. Assessor information says the building at 6937-6939 Topanga Canyon was built in 1961. Lavar also pointed out that the theatre was in the Canoga Park district, not the Woodland Hills District.
Don S: The Hill Street Belasco isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures because nobody’s presented any evidence that it was ever used as a movie theatre. In short, it’s a theatrical treasure but not a cinema treasure. In fact I’m not sure it even has a projection room.
However, the Main Street Belasco is listed here under its final name, the Follies.
Two eras of the Meralta, from Flickr user The Downey Conservancy:
A very early photo of the original, 1925 design by architect Evan Jones in a Spanish Colonial style, handsomely executed in what appears to be brick and terra cotta.
A c1950 photo of the facade as remodeled in a restrained, art modern style by architect Clarence Smale. Smale’s 1940s remodel was so good that I can almost forgive its destruction of Jones’s delightful Spanish fantasy.
Sadly, both are landfill now.
Assessors information on this building provides a 1913 construction date. Definitely not demolished.
For those curious, the City Planning Department report on the adjacent property (4250-4254 S. Broadway, plus 270 W. 42nd Place) describes that building (the Mission Hotel mentioned by ken mc in his comment of June 10, 2007) as a store-residential combination built in 1911.
The Assessor’s Information in the City Planning Department’s ZIMAS report on the addresses from 2229 to 2241 E. Cesar Chavez Ave. says that the building now on the site is a 12,000+ square foot market that was built in 1963. In the satellite views from TerraServer and Google Maps it does look like a big, modern building. I’d say the National is probably dust.
Also, the theatre was in the Boyle Heights district of the City of Los Angeles, not in the unincorporated community of East Los Angeles.
The National is one of several east side theatres briefly mentioned in Abe Hoffman’s reminiscence about growing up in the 1940s, A Boyle Heights Boyhood.
A 2005 book called “Art Deco Los Angeles”, by Suzanne Tarbell Cooper and Amy Ronnebeck Hall, names Clarence J. Smale as the architect of the Congress Theatre.
Flickr user The Downey Conservancy also provides this aerial photo showing the business district of Downey during the late 1930s. The view is northward across Firestone Boulevard, with Downey Avenue running from lower left toward the upper right. Both the Downey/Victory/Avenue and the Meralta Theatre can be picked out. The Meralta is the larger, more northerly theatre, easily identifiable by its tall, white stage-house.
The Avenue Theatre is a block closer, but built of a darker material, probably red brick, and it sports a very dark roof. The auditorium runs parallel to Downey Avenue and its stage house backs up to 3rd Street. In this photo taken during the early 1960s remodeling of the house, the name Avenue Theatre can be seen on the stage-house wall rising from behind the shops to the left.
The 1960s alterations destroyed an earlier facade remodeling of the Avenue, a plain but handsome bit of modern design depicted in this c1950 ad for Cummings Theatres, which also features a nice shot of the modernized Meralta.
Apparently the Downey Theater in the photo is the one that became the Avenue, after spending some time as the Victory.
The three photos match one another, but they don’t match the description of the proposed theatre published in Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of May 30, 1924, which describes a building of two floors, and situated on the northwest corner of Crawford Street (Downey Avenue) and 2nd St. The previous issue of SwB&C had described the proposed building as being 106' by 140', which certainly doesn’t fit the Downey/Victory/Avenue. The building was supposed to contain a 900 seat theatre, nine storefronts, plus sixteen offices on the second floor. I’m thinking that this 1924 project at 2nd and Crawford must have fallen through.
Another bit of the puzzle is that there was apparently a Downey Theatre in operation before March 13, 1925, as the SwB&C issue of that date announced the plans for a theatre to be erected on 3rd Street in Downey (possibly also unbuilt), and said that the lessee of the new house would be “…L.R. Matthews, listed as owner of the Downey Theatre….” Matthews is mentioned again as owner of the Downey Theatre in another SwB&C article about the same project, published April 10, 1925.
This means that, unless there were two theatres in the town both called the Downey at different times, the Downey/Victory/Avenue almost certainly isn’t the one other theatre proposed for Downey Avenue in 1925, which was a project planned by Mr. Matthews on his own behalf. The SwB&C issue of May 15, 1925, only says that the proposed theatre was on a site occupied by a brick garage owned by the Downey Motor Company, which was to be moved and altered. It might be that this project fell thorough too, unless it was the theatre which eventually became El Teatro.
That leaves one more possible candidate to be the actual Downey/Victory/Avenue Theatre: the proposed theatre mentioned in the November 7, 1919 issue of SwB&C, described only as being financed by Willeford Hogan and designed by Harry Haden Whitely. Of course it’s possible that this 1919 building was the one that became El Teatro, as the SwB&C article gives a proposed seating capacity of only 275 for the house, which certainly doesn’t match the Avenue’s capacity of 850 listed above. Of course the building might have been expanded later.
This entry still duplicates the earlier entry for the Encore Theatre:
/theaters/1129/
Apparently the Encore page needs an aka as the Continental.
Here’s a photo of the Tinseltown’s box office area, and this photo is followed in the stream by several pictures of the theatre’s projection equipment.
As can be seen in the photo at the Butte Bible Fellowship website, this rather plain and boxy 1970s-style former triplex has been altered (no pun intended) at one end, so it looks like a church, but the theatre’s original entrance is recognizable around the corner.
A photo of the former Movies 10 as it looks now that it’s been converted into a church appears on the main page of the Calvary Chapel Chico website. They even kept the marquee!