The correct name is Woods Theatre, without an apostrophe. The owner was an A.L. Woods.
FDY may have been a bit late in upping the reported number of seats in this house, unless the theatre was expanded twice, or its original expansion plans had to be put off. The August 27, 1937 issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor announced an impending remodeling and expansion of the Woods which would double the theatre’s capacity.
Southwest Contractor & Maufacturer in its issue of January 22, 1916, said that The Gale Theatrical Company would erect a brick theatre on S. Greenleaf Avenue.
gencin: This page is not about the UA Marketplace 6 multiplex at Colorado and Delacey in Old Town. It’s about the earlier UA single-screen which was about ¾ of a mile east of there, on Colorado near Madison. This theatre was closed when UA opened the Marketplace 6, which was about 1987, I think. The Marketplace 6 is closed now, too, since 2004, while the AMC 8 screen in Old Pasadena is still open, but no longer operated by AMC. For the last few years it’s been operated as the Laemmle One Colorado Cinemas. Laemmle also has the Playhouse 7 multiplex at Colorado and El Molino.
The big dog in Pasadena now is the Pacific Theatres multiplex, the Paseo 14 at 336 East Colorado, where the J.C. Penney store used to be when the Paseo was still Plaza Pasadena. It was the Paseo 14, opened in 2001, that led Regal to shut down the Marketplace 6 and AMC to pull out of its Old Town operation.
As of this date, Cinema Treasures doesn’t yet have pages for the UA Marketplace 6, or the AMC/Laemmle One Colorado Cinemas, or for the Pacific Paseo 14. That early triplex that used to be on Rosemead near the Pacific Hastings is missing, too. The Laemmle Playhouse 7 is listed, though.
The L.A. Library’s California Index has three cards with headings containing the name Lynwood Theatre, but two are contradictory.
The earliest cites Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of August 1, 1924, which said that the contract had been awarded to build the theatre at the corner of Long Beach Avenue and Elizabeth Street.
The second, citing Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 16, 1925, said that bids were being taken for the theatre, but the location is given as the southwest corner of Long Beach Boulevard and Elmwood Avenue.
I suspect- but can’t be positive- that the section of Elmwood Avenue which crossed Long Beach Boulevard was absorbed by Imperial Highway, and thus will not be found on modern maps. Today a tad end of Elmwood exists in the east part of town, one block north of Beechwood Avenue. At Long Beach Boulevard, Beechwood is one block south of Imperial.
Unless the library made an error on one or the other of the cards, or Southwest Builder made an error in one or another of its articles, it looks as though the original project fell through and construction was delayed a year and the site changed. This is too bad because there’s also this card in the index which, though it doesn’t specifically name the Lynwood Theatre, is timed perfectly to refer to it, citing Southwest Builder of May 9, 1924 as saying that a theatre in Lynwood had been designed by architect Werner Ernest Noffke. Since the project was apparently moved I suppose we can’t assume that the same architect was used for the theatre that actually got built.
The third card actually naming the Lynwood Theatre cites California Graphic, issue of August 22, 1925, reporting on the gala opening of the theatre on August 14, 1925.
There is also a card which refers to the replacement theatre built after the earthquake. This card cites two issues of Southwest Builder & Contractor; September 28, 1934, and December 14, 1924. Both announce the plans of the Lynwood Theatre Corporation to erect a new theatre designed by Paul Kerr. The address is given as 11600 Long Beach Boulevard. This is a few blocks south of Elmwood Avenue (assuming that Elmwood is now Imperial), so it might be that the two Lynwood Theaters were in different locations and deserve seperate entries.
However, if mistakes were made by either the library or by Southwest Builder, there is another possibility. If the first Lynwood theatre was built not at the corner of Elmwood Avenue but at the corner of Lynwood Avenue, then the two might have been in the same place since, as near as I can figure from the maps available to me, Lynwood Avenue is just about at the 11600 block of Long Beach Avenue. I think it more likely that there wasn’t any mistake, and the corner of Elmwood Avenue was correct location of the first theatre.
To sum up:
First Lynwood Theatre, opened August 14, 1925, destroyed by earthquake on March 10, 1933, probably located at the southwest corner of Long Beach Boulevard and Elmwood Avenue (which is possibly now Imperial Highway), possibly designed by Werner Ernest Noffke.
Second Lynwood Theatre, 11600 Long Beach Avenue, designed by Paul Kerr, built 1934-35, probably demolished (it doesn’t appear to be there on Terraserver’s 2004 Urban Areas aerial photo.)
So, there are some puzzles for somebody to work on.
Ken: It undoubtedly was an African-American program. The neighborhood remained predominantly black for some time after the Japanese began to be released from the camps. In any case, it would have taken incredible chutzpah for the few Japanese-Americans dribbling back into the neighborhood early in 1945 to start showing Japanese films.
It occurs to me that the reopening date of October 30, 1947, given at the ArchitectDB site, might be the date the theatre returned to showing Japanese films. Another interesting thing is that the name Linda Lea was apparently given to the theatre by its African-American operators (it would be interesting to know the exact origin of the name) but was then kept by the Japanese-American management when the operation went back to its old policy. Maybe the name Fuji-san was considered too obviously Japanese for the early post-war years.
1st and San Pedro was the original location of the Linda Lea. The theatre on that site (324 E. 1st ST.) dated to 1925 and was opened as the Fuji-kan. It closed during the war and reopened as the Linda Lea on February 10, 1945, with a stage show and movies. The reopening story is briefly recounted on this page at the Bronzeville website. The architectDB has this page for the original Linda Lea, but gives the reopening date as 10/30/1947. The Bronzeville page is surely right about the reopening being in 1945, as they display a printed ad from that time. The 1947 date given by the ArchitectDB might actually be the date the operation moved to the Main Street location.
The 1964 Times article certainly erred in saying that this was the largest theatre downtown. The Paramount was the largest. I’m also skeptical of the article’s claim about the original name of this theatre. The writer of the piece probably gave only a cursory glance to the paper’s old articles from the time of the Theatre’s opening. Even before it was built, as shown in this c1920 photo the sign on the building that was soon to be demolished to make way for it called it the Hill Theatre (though the sign had the Junior Orpheum circuit’s logo on it as well.)
Many photos from the 1920’s show the name Hill Street Theatre on the building. Here’s one from c1924. When the name was changed in 1929, it was from Hill Street Theatre to RKO Theatre. The theatre’s name was changed again, to RKO Hillstreet Theatre, shortly thereafter. There were many theatres on the Junior Orpheum circuit, but I don’t think any of them were ever actually named Junior Orpheum Theatre. Junior Orpheum was more a generic appellation for all the theatres in the circuit, and most of them were probably referred to as the Junior Orpheum in whatever city at one time or another, but I’ve never heard of that name being on a marquee.
Yes, the building with the classical facade fronting on Grand. The parking lot next to it would have been very handy for the well-to-do motorists who drove in from West Adams or Hancock Park or Silver Lake to see the latest movie without having to deal with the smelly crowds of streetcar riders on Broadway or Hill Street.
Here is a 1930 aerial photo of downtown Los Angeles, looking north, with Pershing square at center. Follow Hill Street (on the right side of of the square) south for two blocks and you can see the Hillstreet Theatre on the left, with its corner dome. The side view shows how deep the building was, extending more than halfway through the block toward Olive Street.
Knox Heritage has a page about the 500 block of Gay Street, including a few paragraphs about the Riviera Theatre. The Riviera was built in 1920, fitted into an existing building dating to the Victorian era, and featured both movies and live entertainment during its early years. It suffered extensive damage in a fire in 1963, but was restored (this probably accounts for the name change to New Riviera) and continued to run movies regularly until closing with Adios Amigos, as Bob Brown says above. The theatre ran its last movies in the summer of 1976 and was demolished in 1988.
Another page at Knox Heritage is about the new Regal Riviera project, which involves some fairly elaborate planning and financing in order to preserve all or parts of several other historic buildings on the block.
Western Construction Company had made the plans for and would erect this theatre, according to an item in Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of September 16, 1921. The project budget was $30,000. A pipe organ was mentioned in the item, but no details about it were given.
Soboba was the original name of the theatre, probably named after the Soboba band of Luiseno Indians. There is also a Soboba Hot Springs in the area. The name Sabada has no local associations that I can find. It seems most likely that the FDY was in error.
My source for the opening date and closing year, as well as the correct name and the building’s destruction by fire, is the California Index at the L.A. Library website. Here are two cards citing the L.A. Times:
I’m not sure if the Soboba was the same theatre as the San Jacinto, but it seems likely. In the 1950s, San Jacinto was still a very small town and it was rather isolated. I doubt it would have supported two theatres.
The photo to which Lost Memory linked above confirms that the theatre ran movies. The marquee advertises the 1946 film Murder in the Music Hall with Vera Hruba Ralston and William Marshall.
In regard to ken mc’s comment directly above, I believe I’ve seen, in a photo in the L.A. library collection, a rooftop sign for the Broadway Theatre in the 500 block. The photo is a view south on Broadway from north of 5th Street, and the sign is barely visible. You can make out the word “Theatre” but not the theatre’s name. I’ve searched the collection again, but that particular photo hasn’t come up. I’ll keep trying.
This PDF file (a mere 291K) contains part of a 1986 article from a publication of the San Pedro Historical Society, and there’s a small, ca1965, picture of the Globe at the bottom of the page. The article fragment is mostly about the Cabrillo, but mentions that the Globe was built in 1912.
Having seen the photo my memory has been jogged and I now recall having seen the theatre itself, at least once. My dad patronized a tailor who kept a shop on the other side of 6th Street, up the hill a way. I remember sitting in our parked car in front of the tailor shop and seeing that building down the block. This was in the 1950s. Sixth Street was already very shabby, but also quite impressive, being fairly consistently Victorian and Edwardian in style for the first couple of blocks up from the waterfront, and most of the buildings being solid structures of two or three floors. It was the best collection of such buildings I ever saw in Southern California.
Within a few years it was all demolished for an urban renewal project. Had it been preserved, today that neighborhood could be as popular and valuable as Main Street in Ocean Park or Old Town Pasadena.
The plans for this theatre were announced in a November, 1936, article in the magazine Southwest Builder & Contractor. The architect named was A.A. Cantin.
Lost Memory: The pueblo style theatre in San Jacinto was called the Soboba. It opened on September 9, 1927 and closed in 1951. The building was destroyed by fire in December of 1968. Here’s another photo, dated 1936, before the movie-style marquee was added.
In Southwest Builder & Contractor, issue of 1 August, 1941, there is an announcement that Clifford Balch has made plans for a theatre on Maclay Avenue for Maude L. and John T. Rennie.
The L.A. library’s California Index has a card referencing a Times article from 10/25/1925 with the headline “Theatres purchased at big sum”. The thing I found most interesting, though, is that the card names the theatre as the “Mark Strand”, which was the name of an east coast chain run by the brothers Mitchell and Moe Mark. See the comment by Barry Goodkin on this Cinema Treasures page. I wonder if the Mark Brothers did own this theatre or if there was just some sort of mistake by the person who typed up the library card? Index cards making references to the theatre at later dates just call it the Strand or (beginning in 1936) the Fox Strand.
The principals of the firm of Morgan, Walls, & Morgan were Octavius Morgan (1850-1922), his son Octavius Morgan Jr. (1886-1951) and John A. Walls (1858-1922). Octavius Morgan Sr. was the firm’s lead architect and one of the most prolific architects of his era in Los Angeles. Prior to 1910, when Octavius Jr. was made a partner, the firm had been called Morgan & Walls. Both the elder Morgan and John Walls had earlier been in partnership with the aging Ezra F. Kysor, architect of the Pico House and of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, so the company had fairly deep roots in Los Angeles.
As far as I know, Julia Morgan was not related to Octavius Morgan, personally or professionally. Her office was in San Francisco, and the Hearst’s Examiner Building was her first commission in the southern part of the state, as well as her first project for Hearst. On that project she was associated with the Los Angeles firm of Haenke & Dodd. Her office had sole responsibility for designing Hearst’s castle at San Simeon, which project continued from the 1920s through the 1930s.
LM: The Silent Era source is mistaken. They have conflated the actual Tally’s New Broadway (this theatre, later called the Garnett) at 554 S. Broadway with Tally’s Broadway Theatre at 833 S. Broadway. That was the one demolished in 1929 to make way for the expansion of the May Company southward from its original 8th and Broadway building.
The Garnett has also been demolished, of course, but I’m not sure in what year. It was replaced by the Silverwood’s store, which was there by 1913 (at least if the L.A. Library is right about the date of this photo from their collection.) I believe ScottS is probably correct about the 1893 construction date of the Elden Hotel. The building complex along Mercantile Place which adjoined the hotel property on the north (and was eventually replaced by the Arcade Building) dated from about that same time.
The Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main shows up in the California Index at the L.A. Library website, too. It’s a card referencing a Times ad of May 15, 1909, announcing the opening of the theatre that day.
The correct name is Woods Theatre, without an apostrophe. The owner was an A.L. Woods.
FDY may have been a bit late in upping the reported number of seats in this house, unless the theatre was expanded twice, or its original expansion plans had to be put off. The August 27, 1937 issue of Southwest Builder and Contractor announced an impending remodeling and expansion of the Woods which would double the theatre’s capacity.
The stringy chandelier in the former Warner Downtown auditorium is a post-theatrical addition.
Southwest Contractor & Maufacturer in its issue of January 22, 1916, said that The Gale Theatrical Company would erect a brick theatre on S. Greenleaf Avenue.
gencin: This page is not about the UA Marketplace 6 multiplex at Colorado and Delacey in Old Town. It’s about the earlier UA single-screen which was about ¾ of a mile east of there, on Colorado near Madison. This theatre was closed when UA opened the Marketplace 6, which was about 1987, I think. The Marketplace 6 is closed now, too, since 2004, while the AMC 8 screen in Old Pasadena is still open, but no longer operated by AMC. For the last few years it’s been operated as the Laemmle One Colorado Cinemas. Laemmle also has the Playhouse 7 multiplex at Colorado and El Molino.
The big dog in Pasadena now is the Pacific Theatres multiplex, the Paseo 14 at 336 East Colorado, where the J.C. Penney store used to be when the Paseo was still Plaza Pasadena. It was the Paseo 14, opened in 2001, that led Regal to shut down the Marketplace 6 and AMC to pull out of its Old Town operation.
As of this date, Cinema Treasures doesn’t yet have pages for the UA Marketplace 6, or the AMC/Laemmle One Colorado Cinemas, or for the Pacific Paseo 14. That early triplex that used to be on Rosemead near the Pacific Hastings is missing, too. The Laemmle Playhouse 7 is listed, though.
The L.A. Library’s California Index has three cards with headings containing the name Lynwood Theatre, but two are contradictory.
The earliest cites Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of August 1, 1924, which said that the contract had been awarded to build the theatre at the corner of Long Beach Avenue and Elizabeth Street.
The second, citing Southwest Builder & Contractor issue of January 16, 1925, said that bids were being taken for the theatre, but the location is given as the southwest corner of Long Beach Boulevard and Elmwood Avenue.
I suspect- but can’t be positive- that the section of Elmwood Avenue which crossed Long Beach Boulevard was absorbed by Imperial Highway, and thus will not be found on modern maps. Today a tad end of Elmwood exists in the east part of town, one block north of Beechwood Avenue. At Long Beach Boulevard, Beechwood is one block south of Imperial.
Unless the library made an error on one or the other of the cards, or Southwest Builder made an error in one or another of its articles, it looks as though the original project fell through and construction was delayed a year and the site changed. This is too bad because there’s also this card in the index which, though it doesn’t specifically name the Lynwood Theatre, is timed perfectly to refer to it, citing Southwest Builder of May 9, 1924 as saying that a theatre in Lynwood had been designed by architect Werner Ernest Noffke. Since the project was apparently moved I suppose we can’t assume that the same architect was used for the theatre that actually got built.
The third card actually naming the Lynwood Theatre cites California Graphic, issue of August 22, 1925, reporting on the gala opening of the theatre on August 14, 1925.
There is also a card which refers to the replacement theatre built after the earthquake. This card cites two issues of Southwest Builder & Contractor; September 28, 1934, and December 14, 1924. Both announce the plans of the Lynwood Theatre Corporation to erect a new theatre designed by Paul Kerr. The address is given as 11600 Long Beach Boulevard. This is a few blocks south of Elmwood Avenue (assuming that Elmwood is now Imperial), so it might be that the two Lynwood Theaters were in different locations and deserve seperate entries.
However, if mistakes were made by either the library or by Southwest Builder, there is another possibility. If the first Lynwood theatre was built not at the corner of Elmwood Avenue but at the corner of Lynwood Avenue, then the two might have been in the same place since, as near as I can figure from the maps available to me, Lynwood Avenue is just about at the 11600 block of Long Beach Avenue. I think it more likely that there wasn’t any mistake, and the corner of Elmwood Avenue was correct location of the first theatre.
To sum up:
First Lynwood Theatre, opened August 14, 1925, destroyed by earthquake on March 10, 1933, probably located at the southwest corner of Long Beach Boulevard and Elmwood Avenue (which is possibly now Imperial Highway), possibly designed by Werner Ernest Noffke.
Second Lynwood Theatre, 11600 Long Beach Avenue, designed by Paul Kerr, built 1934-35, probably demolished (it doesn’t appear to be there on Terraserver’s 2004 Urban Areas aerial photo.)
So, there are some puzzles for somebody to work on.
Ken: It undoubtedly was an African-American program. The neighborhood remained predominantly black for some time after the Japanese began to be released from the camps. In any case, it would have taken incredible chutzpah for the few Japanese-Americans dribbling back into the neighborhood early in 1945 to start showing Japanese films.
It occurs to me that the reopening date of October 30, 1947, given at the ArchitectDB site, might be the date the theatre returned to showing Japanese films. Another interesting thing is that the name Linda Lea was apparently given to the theatre by its African-American operators (it would be interesting to know the exact origin of the name) but was then kept by the Japanese-American management when the operation went back to its old policy. Maybe the name Fuji-san was considered too obviously Japanese for the early post-war years.
1st and San Pedro was the original location of the Linda Lea. The theatre on that site (324 E. 1st ST.) dated to 1925 and was opened as the Fuji-kan. It closed during the war and reopened as the Linda Lea on February 10, 1945, with a stage show and movies. The reopening story is briefly recounted on this page at the Bronzeville website. The architectDB has this page for the original Linda Lea, but gives the reopening date as 10/30/1947. The Bronzeville page is surely right about the reopening being in 1945, as they display a printed ad from that time. The 1947 date given by the ArchitectDB might actually be the date the operation moved to the Main Street location.
The 1964 Times article certainly erred in saying that this was the largest theatre downtown. The Paramount was the largest. I’m also skeptical of the article’s claim about the original name of this theatre. The writer of the piece probably gave only a cursory glance to the paper’s old articles from the time of the Theatre’s opening. Even before it was built, as shown in this c1920 photo the sign on the building that was soon to be demolished to make way for it called it the Hill Theatre (though the sign had the Junior Orpheum circuit’s logo on it as well.)
Many photos from the 1920’s show the name Hill Street Theatre on the building. Here’s one from c1924. When the name was changed in 1929, it was from Hill Street Theatre to RKO Theatre. The theatre’s name was changed again, to RKO Hillstreet Theatre, shortly thereafter. There were many theatres on the Junior Orpheum circuit, but I don’t think any of them were ever actually named Junior Orpheum Theatre. Junior Orpheum was more a generic appellation for all the theatres in the circuit, and most of them were probably referred to as the Junior Orpheum in whatever city at one time or another, but I’ve never heard of that name being on a marquee.
Yes, the building with the classical facade fronting on Grand. The parking lot next to it would have been very handy for the well-to-do motorists who drove in from West Adams or Hancock Park or Silver Lake to see the latest movie without having to deal with the smelly crowds of streetcar riders on Broadway or Hill Street.
#728 is interesting. At the lower right it gives a novel view of the Fox Criterion on Grand Avenue north of 7th Street.
Here is a 1930 aerial photo of downtown Los Angeles, looking north, with Pershing square at center. Follow Hill Street (on the right side of of the square) south for two blocks and you can see the Hillstreet Theatre on the left, with its corner dome. The side view shows how deep the building was, extending more than halfway through the block toward Olive Street.
L.A. library’s index cards use the American dating system, with the month first.
I’ve been unable to determine if the Soboba theatre was on East or West Main Street.
Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mr. Robinson,
We’ll get back to you eventually.
Knox Heritage has a page about the 500 block of Gay Street, including a few paragraphs about the Riviera Theatre. The Riviera was built in 1920, fitted into an existing building dating to the Victorian era, and featured both movies and live entertainment during its early years. It suffered extensive damage in a fire in 1963, but was restored (this probably accounts for the name change to New Riviera) and continued to run movies regularly until closing with Adios Amigos, as Bob Brown says above. The theatre ran its last movies in the summer of 1976 and was demolished in 1988.
Another page at Knox Heritage is about the new Regal Riviera project, which involves some fairly elaborate planning and financing in order to preserve all or parts of several other historic buildings on the block.
Western Construction Company had made the plans for and would erect this theatre, according to an item in Southwest Builder & Contractor’s issue of September 16, 1921. The project budget was $30,000. A pipe organ was mentioned in the item, but no details about it were given.
Soboba was the original name of the theatre, probably named after the Soboba band of Luiseno Indians. There is also a Soboba Hot Springs in the area. The name Sabada has no local associations that I can find. It seems most likely that the FDY was in error.
My source for the opening date and closing year, as well as the correct name and the building’s destruction by fire, is the California Index at the L.A. Library website. Here are two cards citing the L.A. Times:
View link
View link
I’m not sure if the Soboba was the same theatre as the San Jacinto, but it seems likely. In the 1950s, San Jacinto was still a very small town and it was rather isolated. I doubt it would have supported two theatres.
The photo to which Lost Memory linked above confirms that the theatre ran movies. The marquee advertises the 1946 film Murder in the Music Hall with Vera Hruba Ralston and William Marshall.
In regard to ken mc’s comment directly above, I believe I’ve seen, in a photo in the L.A. library collection, a rooftop sign for the Broadway Theatre in the 500 block. The photo is a view south on Broadway from north of 5th Street, and the sign is barely visible. You can make out the word “Theatre” but not the theatre’s name. I’ve searched the collection again, but that particular photo hasn’t come up. I’ll keep trying.
This PDF file (a mere 291K) contains part of a 1986 article from a publication of the San Pedro Historical Society, and there’s a small, ca1965, picture of the Globe at the bottom of the page. The article fragment is mostly about the Cabrillo, but mentions that the Globe was built in 1912.
Having seen the photo my memory has been jogged and I now recall having seen the theatre itself, at least once. My dad patronized a tailor who kept a shop on the other side of 6th Street, up the hill a way. I remember sitting in our parked car in front of the tailor shop and seeing that building down the block. This was in the 1950s. Sixth Street was already very shabby, but also quite impressive, being fairly consistently Victorian and Edwardian in style for the first couple of blocks up from the waterfront, and most of the buildings being solid structures of two or three floors. It was the best collection of such buildings I ever saw in Southern California.
Within a few years it was all demolished for an urban renewal project. Had it been preserved, today that neighborhood could be as popular and valuable as Main Street in Ocean Park or Old Town Pasadena.
The plans for this theatre were announced in a November, 1936, article in the magazine Southwest Builder & Contractor. The architect named was A.A. Cantin.
Lost Memory: The pueblo style theatre in San Jacinto was called the Soboba. It opened on September 9, 1927 and closed in 1951. The building was destroyed by fire in December of 1968. Here’s another photo, dated 1936, before the movie-style marquee was added.
In Southwest Builder & Contractor, issue of 1 August, 1941, there is an announcement that Clifford Balch has made plans for a theatre on Maclay Avenue for Maude L. and John T. Rennie.
The L.A. library’s California Index has a card referencing a Times article from 10/25/1925 with the headline “Theatres purchased at big sum”. The thing I found most interesting, though, is that the card names the theatre as the “Mark Strand”, which was the name of an east coast chain run by the brothers Mitchell and Moe Mark. See the comment by Barry Goodkin on this Cinema Treasures page. I wonder if the Mark Brothers did own this theatre or if there was just some sort of mistake by the person who typed up the library card? Index cards making references to the theatre at later dates just call it the Strand or (beginning in 1936) the Fox Strand.
Call letters of broadcasting stations in the east routinely begin with a “W”, but the BKB stood for Balaban & Katz Broadcasting.
The principals of the firm of Morgan, Walls, & Morgan were Octavius Morgan (1850-1922), his son Octavius Morgan Jr. (1886-1951) and John A. Walls (1858-1922). Octavius Morgan Sr. was the firm’s lead architect and one of the most prolific architects of his era in Los Angeles. Prior to 1910, when Octavius Jr. was made a partner, the firm had been called Morgan & Walls. Both the elder Morgan and John Walls had earlier been in partnership with the aging Ezra F. Kysor, architect of the Pico House and of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, so the company had fairly deep roots in Los Angeles.
As far as I know, Julia Morgan was not related to Octavius Morgan, personally or professionally. Her office was in San Francisco, and the Hearst’s Examiner Building was her first commission in the southern part of the state, as well as her first project for Hearst. On that project she was associated with the Los Angeles firm of Haenke & Dodd. Her office had sole responsibility for designing Hearst’s castle at San Simeon, which project continued from the 1920s through the 1930s.
LM: The Silent Era source is mistaken. They have conflated the actual Tally’s New Broadway (this theatre, later called the Garnett) at 554 S. Broadway with Tally’s Broadway Theatre at 833 S. Broadway. That was the one demolished in 1929 to make way for the expansion of the May Company southward from its original 8th and Broadway building.
The Garnett has also been demolished, of course, but I’m not sure in what year. It was replaced by the Silverwood’s store, which was there by 1913 (at least if the L.A. Library is right about the date of this photo from their collection.) I believe ScottS is probably correct about the 1893 construction date of the Elden Hotel. The building complex along Mercantile Place which adjoined the hotel property on the north (and was eventually replaced by the Arcade Building) dated from about that same time.
The Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main shows up in the California Index at the L.A. Library website, too. It’s a card referencing a Times ad of May 15, 1909, announcing the opening of the theatre that day.