The overhead sign and arched entrance of this early theatre can be glimpsed in a photo that appears on the cover of the Chico volume of Arcadia Publishing Company’s Images of America series. The cover can be seen in the book’s preview at Google Books by searching with the terms “images Chico California”.
Here is a 1948 view of Chico’s Broadway showing at left the three story building which had housed the Lyric. The altered storefront is partly concealed behind the parked truck.
A few years ago the Chico News & Review published an article which mentioned the names of several of the town’s vanished theatres, the Lyric among them. Other names listed were the Star, the Gem, the Empire, the Dreamland, the Iris, the Broadway (said to have had a movable roof that could be opened to the night sky during the valley’s sultry summers), and the Airdrome, which was always open-air.
Some of these names may have denoted the same theatre at different times, but even taking that into consideration, it looks as though Chico has historically been generously endowed with theatres. So far I’ve been unable to track down any solid information about any of these missing theatres, other than the Lyric and the Empire.
The Empire was apparently closed when this 1940 photograph was taken. The marquee reads “Always a Good Show, American and Senator Theatres”, and there’s a lot of stuff piled on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. A renovation, perhaps, or maybe evidence that the Empire had been closed for good and the space was being converted to some other use?
A few years after this photo was taken, the larger and fancier American Theatre across the street from the Empire would be gutted by a fire and then rebuilt, minus its upper floor and classical architecture, and be renamed the El Rey, the name it retains today as an occasional live performance venue.
I lost track of this thread. To take up the question of storefronts in theatre buildings, I think that whether or not a given theatre devoted much of its frontage to shops had to do with the value of the land for retail uses, and this in turn was a function of location.
A theatre builder in a fairly busy neighborhood with lots of pedestrian traffic would be inclined to devote as much of the valuable street frontage as possible to shops. That’s why most of the large downtown theatres had them. Retailers would pay very high rents for frontage on Broadway or Hill Street, as well as on Hollywood Boulevard, Colorado Street in Pasadena, Third Street in Santa Monica, or any busy suburban business district.
On the other hand, builders erecting theatres on streets with few pedestrians and more motorized traffic were less likely to devote land to shops, as the rents were apt to be too low to justify the cost of building them. As a rule, the earlier a theatre was built, the more likely it was to be built in a fairly dense business district, and the more likely it was to have many shops built as part of the project.
The Fairfax was not unique for its time. Other theatres on suburban business streets with many shops in their buildings included the Garfield in Alhambra, The Alex in Glendale, The Golden Gate in East Los Angeles, Bard’s Pasadena (now the Academy) in Pasadena, the Fox Ritz on Wilshire Boulevard, the Leimert (now the Vision Theatre) in Leimert Park… I could go on for quite a while.
It’s true that the greatest number of shops accompanied theatres on corner lots but, valuable though it was, the extra street frontage was probably not the main draw for theatre builders. It was probably the high visibility of the major intersections that attracted them. The opportunity to make more rent from more shops was a bonus.
Later large theatres, such as the Academy in Inglewood, the Crest in Westwood, the Tumbleweed in El Monte, and the Baldwin near Baldwin Hills Village, were usually built on the edge of or well outside the denser business districts and were almost always built without adjacent shops. By that time, nearby parking for theatre patrons was more important to builders than was access to transit or being in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic. Once you start building large parking lots around your theatre, you’ve pretty much ruined the location for pedestrian-dependent retail shops.
I was lucky to stumble upon a brief biography of the elder Octavius Morgan, which reveled his connection to Keysor and to the Grand. It turns out that Morgan was quite young when he became Keysor’s partner. He was born in Canterbury in 1850 (no date given, unfortunately) and studied architecture in England (no indication of exactly where) before emigrating to the United States in 1871. He was in Denver two years before moving to Los Angeles, so he must have been 23. Keysor was born in 1835, and thus quite a bit older than his new business partner.
Also, the L.A. Library’s California Index claims that “Keysor” is an erroneous spelling, and his name is actually spelled “Kysor”. They attribute the error to Harold Kirker’s 1960 book, “California’s Architectural Frontier”, published by the Huntington Library, no less. However, the Keysor spelling is used in my source, “An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California” which was published in Chicago in 1889.
I suppose the library is most likely to be correct, and the index does have multiple references using Ezra “Kysor” and only two using Ezra “Keysor”, one of which is the correction itself. Still, I’ve seen mistakes in the index before. And the Huntington, after all, is the Huntington. I wish the smart people would agree on these things.
I made a typo in paragraph two of the comment immediately above where it says that Ezra Keysor retired in 1877. He retired a decade later, of course, in 1887, three years after the Grand was completed, and it was then that John Walls became a partner in the firm.
It has occurred to me that, as this firm was the first and, for quite a while, one of the busiest practices in Los Angeles, and given the fact that they designed the first big theatre in the city, and that 26 years later they designed a major vaudeville house for Pantages, they might have designed other theatres as well in the years between 1884 and 1910. Several large theatres were built during that time, and the architects of only a few have been identified.
After almost three years, I’ve finally unearthed information about the architects who designed the Grand, and the theatre turns out to have been the first of a distinguished line indeed. It is attributable to the firm of Keysor & Morgan, the partnership formed in 1876 between Ezra F. Keysor (architect of the Pico House hotel) and the elder Octavius Morgan, who had been employed by Keysor as a draftsman since 1874. Among their works in Los Angeles were St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, St. Vincent’s College on 6th Street, Sister’s Hospital, and the Nadeau Block.
Upon Keysor’s retirement in 1877, John Walls became a partner. In 1910, under the name Morgan & Walls, the firm designed what is now known as the Arcade Theatre, which was the first Los Angeles house built for Seattle vaudeville impresario Alexander Pantages.
When Morgan’s son, Octavius W. Morgan, was later made a partner, the firm became Morgan, Walls & Morgan, and designed for Oliver Morosco the Broadway house which eventually became the Globe Theatre.
After the death of the elder Morgan, Stiles O. Clements became a partner and, as Morgan, Walls & Clements, the firm went on to design such iconic Los Angeles palaces the Mayan Theatre, the Wiltern Theatre, and the Leimert Theatre. With the unfortunate exception of the Grand itself, all of these theatres still stand.
I don’t know what the references to 1939 are about in the comments by Joe on Nov. 28, 2003, and by L. Thomas on Sep. 17, 2004, but their skepticism about the date was apparently justified. The L.A. library’s info page for this architect’s rendering of the Encino gives the drawing’s date as 1948. Thus (if the library has it right) the building was probably completed in 1949. The page also names the architect as William L. Pereira.
Actually, knowing that the place was designed by Pereira, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had in fact been built in 1939. His very modern design for the Pan Pacific Theatre and bowling alley on Melrose (depicted here) dated from the pre-war era. Even earlier, associated with his brother Hal in the firm of Pereira & Pereira, W.L. had designed such forward-looking theatres as Chicago’s Esquire in 1938, and the Vogue opened that same year in Manistee, Michigan. Pereira was one of the pioneers of what came to be known as the midcentury modern style.
Stephenson Avenue is the former name of Whittier Boulevard itself. I’m quite sure that this is the same theatre already listed as the Jewel Theatre in East Los Angeles. The Jewel Theatre is listed in the 1929 L.A. City Directory at 3817 Whittier Boulevard. As it seems unlikely that two theatres with addresses only 14 numbers apart would be given the same name, most likely a small adjustment was made in the address at the time of the street name change.
Also note that a parcel on an east-west street near Whittier and Boyle would have had a number near 2200 in 1925, as it would now.
The assessor report for 1029 E. Vernon Avenue gives a construction date of 1965 for the church that is there now. Apparently the theatre was demolished to make way for it.
Theatre info needs updated to Closed/Demolished. The original S. Charles Lee-designed Temple Theatre that James Edwards had built on this corner in 1940 lasted more than forty years, but this four screen theatre he built to replace it in the early 1980s survived only half as long. Temple City is now without a local theatre.
Now that the New York Times has opened much of its archives to us non-paying rabble, a July, 1997 article on the occasion of the closing of the Angelika 57 is available right here. (The Times may still require free registration at their site before you can see the article- I’m not sure.)
The article gives the opening date of the Lincoln Art Theatre as July 21, 1964, and the seating capacity as 572.
In addition to its incarnations as the Bombay Cinema (1976-1985) and Cineplex Odeon’s Biograph (February 1988-September 1991), there was a period in between when it was called the New Carnegie Theater, a resurrection of the former Little Carnegie Theater which had been demolished in 1982.
The house became the Angelika 57 in 1993, and closed forever on July 10, 1997.
The lead architect for this neo-deco style multiplex was Marios Savopoulos, of the Long Beach, California firm Perkowitz+Ruth, in association with the developers of The Grove, Caruso Affiliated Holdings.
The Jack London Stadium Cinema was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was swallowed by Regal.
The Holiday Theater was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was taken over by Regal.
The Pearl Highlands 12 was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was swallowed by Regal. The firm’s founder and lead architect, Daniel Uesugi, is a native of Wahiawa, Hawaii.
The Santa Cruz 9 was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was taken over by Regal.
The Dole Cannery 18 was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, who designed at least a dozen projects for the Signature Theatres chain before it was taken over by Regal. The lead architects were Daniel Uesugi and his daughter Erin, who was responsible for the interior designs. The Dole multiplex has 4000 seats. It opened in May, 1999.
No, I’ve never been a projectionist, and I’ve never had a chance to visit Monterey. I’ve always intended to spend some time in that part of the state, but so far I’ve only passed through on highway 101 and had no time to stop.
Yes, the Elmo was two blocks southeast (the streets in downtown SLO being oriented more to the ordinal than the cardinal points of the compass) of Monterey Street on Morro Street. The Obispo and the Fremont were about a block apart, both on the south side of Monterey.
The Elmo was certainly demolished first. I’m not sure which theatre opened first because a firm date hasn’t been established for the original El Monterey. The Elmo apparently opened in 1912 (see comment posted by Bonnach on Jan 27, 2007, above.) The El Monterey was extensively rebuilt (though later photos reveal that the original facade remained largely intact) in 1928, which was about when it was renamed the Obispo, but that postcard photo of it looks very old, and might even predate the 1912 opening of the Elmo. I’m thinking the El Monterey might have originally been a nickelodeon, with the bulk of the construction budget poured into that ornate facade and very little spent on the auditorium.
On the far right is the Elmo Theatre on Morro Street at Marsh. It’s facade is well lit by afternoon sunlight, as is the upper part of its vivid red stage house.
Left of center can be seen the distinctive arc of the blade sign on the Fremont Theatre, at 1025 Monterey Street.
The large white building just right of center is the Anderson Hotel at Monterey and Morro. The Obispo Theatre’s facade, with a bit of light reflecting from its blade and marquee, can be seen just short of midway along Monterey Street from the hotel to the Fremont.
The overhead sign and arched entrance of this early theatre can be glimpsed in a photo that appears on the cover of the Chico volume of Arcadia Publishing Company’s Images of America series. The cover can be seen in the book’s preview at Google Books by searching with the terms “images Chico California”.
Here is a 1948 view of Chico’s Broadway showing at left the three story building which had housed the Lyric. The altered storefront is partly concealed behind the parked truck.
A few years ago the Chico News & Review published an article which mentioned the names of several of the town’s vanished theatres, the Lyric among them. Other names listed were the Star, the Gem, the Empire, the Dreamland, the Iris, the Broadway (said to have had a movable roof that could be opened to the night sky during the valley’s sultry summers), and the Airdrome, which was always open-air.
Some of these names may have denoted the same theatre at different times, but even taking that into consideration, it looks as though Chico has historically been generously endowed with theatres. So far I’ve been unable to track down any solid information about any of these missing theatres, other than the Lyric and the Empire.
The Empire was apparently closed when this 1940 photograph was taken. The marquee reads “Always a Good Show, American and Senator Theatres”, and there’s a lot of stuff piled on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. A renovation, perhaps, or maybe evidence that the Empire had been closed for good and the space was being converted to some other use?
A few years after this photo was taken, the larger and fancier American Theatre across the street from the Empire would be gutted by a fire and then rebuilt, minus its upper floor and classical architecture, and be renamed the El Rey, the name it retains today as an occasional live performance venue.
I lost track of this thread. To take up the question of storefronts in theatre buildings, I think that whether or not a given theatre devoted much of its frontage to shops had to do with the value of the land for retail uses, and this in turn was a function of location.
A theatre builder in a fairly busy neighborhood with lots of pedestrian traffic would be inclined to devote as much of the valuable street frontage as possible to shops. That’s why most of the large downtown theatres had them. Retailers would pay very high rents for frontage on Broadway or Hill Street, as well as on Hollywood Boulevard, Colorado Street in Pasadena, Third Street in Santa Monica, or any busy suburban business district.
On the other hand, builders erecting theatres on streets with few pedestrians and more motorized traffic were less likely to devote land to shops, as the rents were apt to be too low to justify the cost of building them. As a rule, the earlier a theatre was built, the more likely it was to be built in a fairly dense business district, and the more likely it was to have many shops built as part of the project.
The Fairfax was not unique for its time. Other theatres on suburban business streets with many shops in their buildings included the Garfield in Alhambra, The Alex in Glendale, The Golden Gate in East Los Angeles, Bard’s Pasadena (now the Academy) in Pasadena, the Fox Ritz on Wilshire Boulevard, the Leimert (now the Vision Theatre) in Leimert Park… I could go on for quite a while.
It’s true that the greatest number of shops accompanied theatres on corner lots but, valuable though it was, the extra street frontage was probably not the main draw for theatre builders. It was probably the high visibility of the major intersections that attracted them. The opportunity to make more rent from more shops was a bonus.
Later large theatres, such as the Academy in Inglewood, the Crest in Westwood, the Tumbleweed in El Monte, and the Baldwin near Baldwin Hills Village, were usually built on the edge of or well outside the denser business districts and were almost always built without adjacent shops. By that time, nearby parking for theatre patrons was more important to builders than was access to transit or being in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic. Once you start building large parking lots around your theatre, you’ve pretty much ruined the location for pedestrian-dependent retail shops.
The Drexel Gateway Theater was designed by the Toronto firm of Mesbur+Smith Architects; David K. Mesbur, lead architect.
The architect for the renovation of the Gordon was David K. Mesbur. He received a Los Angeles Architectural Conservancy Award for the project in 1987.
I was lucky to stumble upon a brief biography of the elder Octavius Morgan, which reveled his connection to Keysor and to the Grand. It turns out that Morgan was quite young when he became Keysor’s partner. He was born in Canterbury in 1850 (no date given, unfortunately) and studied architecture in England (no indication of exactly where) before emigrating to the United States in 1871. He was in Denver two years before moving to Los Angeles, so he must have been 23. Keysor was born in 1835, and thus quite a bit older than his new business partner.
Also, the L.A. Library’s California Index claims that “Keysor” is an erroneous spelling, and his name is actually spelled “Kysor”. They attribute the error to Harold Kirker’s 1960 book, “California’s Architectural Frontier”, published by the Huntington Library, no less. However, the Keysor spelling is used in my source, “An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California” which was published in Chicago in 1889.
I suppose the library is most likely to be correct, and the index does have multiple references using Ezra “Kysor” and only two using Ezra “Keysor”, one of which is the correction itself. Still, I’ve seen mistakes in the index before. And the Huntington, after all, is the Huntington. I wish the smart people would agree on these things.
Remember the Linda Lea!
A rebuilding that shall live in infamy!
I made a typo in paragraph two of the comment immediately above where it says that Ezra Keysor retired in 1877. He retired a decade later, of course, in 1887, three years after the Grand was completed, and it was then that John Walls became a partner in the firm.
It has occurred to me that, as this firm was the first and, for quite a while, one of the busiest practices in Los Angeles, and given the fact that they designed the first big theatre in the city, and that 26 years later they designed a major vaudeville house for Pantages, they might have designed other theatres as well in the years between 1884 and 1910. Several large theatres were built during that time, and the architects of only a few have been identified.
Seriously? They’re opening on December 7th?
December 7th?
After almost three years, I’ve finally unearthed information about the architects who designed the Grand, and the theatre turns out to have been the first of a distinguished line indeed. It is attributable to the firm of Keysor & Morgan, the partnership formed in 1876 between Ezra F. Keysor (architect of the Pico House hotel) and the elder Octavius Morgan, who had been employed by Keysor as a draftsman since 1874. Among their works in Los Angeles were St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, St. Vincent’s College on 6th Street, Sister’s Hospital, and the Nadeau Block.
Upon Keysor’s retirement in 1877, John Walls became a partner. In 1910, under the name Morgan & Walls, the firm designed what is now known as the Arcade Theatre, which was the first Los Angeles house built for Seattle vaudeville impresario Alexander Pantages.
When Morgan’s son, Octavius W. Morgan, was later made a partner, the firm became Morgan, Walls & Morgan, and designed for Oliver Morosco the Broadway house which eventually became the Globe Theatre.
After the death of the elder Morgan, Stiles O. Clements became a partner and, as Morgan, Walls & Clements, the firm went on to design such iconic Los Angeles palaces the Mayan Theatre, the Wiltern Theatre, and the Leimert Theatre. With the unfortunate exception of the Grand itself, all of these theatres still stand.
I don’t know what the references to 1939 are about in the comments by Joe on Nov. 28, 2003, and by L. Thomas on Sep. 17, 2004, but their skepticism about the date was apparently justified. The L.A. library’s info page for this architect’s rendering of the Encino gives the drawing’s date as 1948. Thus (if the library has it right) the building was probably completed in 1949. The page also names the architect as William L. Pereira.
Actually, knowing that the place was designed by Pereira, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had in fact been built in 1939. His very modern design for the Pan Pacific Theatre and bowling alley on Melrose (depicted here) dated from the pre-war era. Even earlier, associated with his brother Hal in the firm of Pereira & Pereira, W.L. had designed such forward-looking theatres as Chicago’s Esquire in 1938, and the Vogue opened that same year in Manistee, Michigan. Pereira was one of the pioneers of what came to be known as the midcentury modern style.
Stephenson Avenue is the former name of Whittier Boulevard itself. I’m quite sure that this is the same theatre already listed as the Jewel Theatre in East Los Angeles. The Jewel Theatre is listed in the 1929 L.A. City Directory at 3817 Whittier Boulevard. As it seems unlikely that two theatres with addresses only 14 numbers apart would be given the same name, most likely a small adjustment was made in the address at the time of the street name change.
Also note that a parcel on an east-west street near Whittier and Boyle would have had a number near 2200 in 1925, as it would now.
The assessor report for 1029 E. Vernon Avenue gives a construction date of 1965 for the church that is there now. Apparently the theatre was demolished to make way for it.
Theatre info needs updated to Closed/Demolished. The original S. Charles Lee-designed Temple Theatre that James Edwards had built on this corner in 1940 lasted more than forty years, but this four screen theatre he built to replace it in the early 1980s survived only half as long. Temple City is now without a local theatre.
Now that the New York Times has opened much of its archives to us non-paying rabble, a July, 1997 article on the occasion of the closing of the Angelika 57 is available right here. (The Times may still require free registration at their site before you can see the article- I’m not sure.)
The article gives the opening date of the Lincoln Art Theatre as July 21, 1964, and the seating capacity as 572.
In addition to its incarnations as the Bombay Cinema (1976-1985) and Cineplex Odeon’s Biograph (February 1988-September 1991), there was a period in between when it was called the New Carnegie Theater, a resurrection of the former Little Carnegie Theater which had been demolished in 1982.
The house became the Angelika 57 in 1993, and closed forever on July 10, 1997.
The lead architect for this neo-deco style multiplex was Marios Savopoulos, of the Long Beach, California firm Perkowitz+Ruth, in association with the developers of The Grove, Caruso Affiliated Holdings.
The Jack London Stadium Cinema was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was swallowed by Regal.
The Holiday Theater was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was taken over by Regal.
The Pearl Highlands 12 was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was swallowed by Regal. The firm’s founder and lead architect, Daniel Uesugi, is a native of Wahiawa, Hawaii.
The Santa Cruz 9 was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, which did quite a bit of work for the Signature Theatres chain before it was taken over by Regal.
The Dole Cannery 18 was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm Uesugi & Associates, who designed at least a dozen projects for the Signature Theatres chain before it was taken over by Regal. The lead architects were Daniel Uesugi and his daughter Erin, who was responsible for the interior designs. The Dole multiplex has 4000 seats. It opened in May, 1999.
No, I’ve never been a projectionist, and I’ve never had a chance to visit Monterey. I’ve always intended to spend some time in that part of the state, but so far I’ve only passed through on highway 101 and had no time to stop.
Yes, the Elmo was two blocks southeast (the streets in downtown SLO being oriented more to the ordinal than the cardinal points of the compass) of Monterey Street on Morro Street. The Obispo and the Fremont were about a block apart, both on the south side of Monterey.
The Elmo was certainly demolished first. I’m not sure which theatre opened first because a firm date hasn’t been established for the original El Monterey. The Elmo apparently opened in 1912 (see comment posted by Bonnach on Jan 27, 2007, above.) The El Monterey was extensively rebuilt (though later photos reveal that the original facade remained largely intact) in 1928, which was about when it was renamed the Obispo, but that postcard photo of it looks very old, and might even predate the 1912 opening of the Elmo. I’m thinking the El Monterey might have originally been a nickelodeon, with the bulk of the construction budget poured into that ornate facade and very little spent on the auditorium.
Flickr user aroid presents a 1958 bird’s eye view of downtown San Luis Obispo in which three of the city’s theatres can be picked out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/selago/860154876/
On the far right is the Elmo Theatre on Morro Street at Marsh. It’s facade is well lit by afternoon sunlight, as is the upper part of its vivid red stage house.
Left of center can be seen the distinctive arc of the blade sign on the Fremont Theatre, at 1025 Monterey Street.
The large white building just right of center is the Anderson Hotel at Monterey and Morro. The Obispo Theatre’s facade, with a bit of light reflecting from its blade and marquee, can be seen just short of midway along Monterey Street from the hotel to the Fremont.