Gaiety Theatre
523 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
523 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
4 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 50 of 82 comments
kenmc
Can you please re post what you did on May 16? You wrote –
Here is the People’s Theater, circa 1907. I don’t know if this has been posted on one of the other pages already:
http://tinyurl.com/yv9n7l
I cannot open it. Thank you.
Actually this would be just north of the Subway Terminal Building.
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The theater south of the Subway Terminal building is probably the College Theater. Ken’s url probably expired…he usually posts a new link if you mention it, so check back soon. Here’s the link to the College /theaters/10581/
I am trying to determine which theater was the “Socialist Movie Theater” or the “Los Angeles Socialist Movie Theater” on 5th Street around Main. Given its name, Peoples Theater sounds like it may be it. The theater would have shown socialist journalist and director Frank E. Wolfe’s film FROM DUSK TO DAWN (1913) Do any of you have information about this? There was a whole socialist/progressive film movement happening around that time.
Here is a link to a photo of Hill Street with the Subway Terminal Bldg above. If you get out your magnifying glass and look right next to it, there seems to be a low bldg with a dark awning. The sign above it reads “Peoples” Was that Peoples Theater?
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Also, in a post from May 16, kenmc writes:
Here is the People’s Theater, circa 1907. I don’t know if this has been posted on one of the other pages already:
http://tinyurl.com/yv9n7l It is not opening. HOW CAN I OPEN THAT?
posted by ken mc on May 16, 2007 at 5:03pm
Thanks for any and all help.
Anybody left that was around in 1926? If they were a teenager, they would now be close to 100. That narrows down the eligibles a bit. Plus they have to have lived in LA and frequented Main Street.
Here are some listings for 523 S. Main over the years. LAT=Los Angeles Times article and all other dates are from the city directory.
New People’s [1906 LAT]
People’s [1908 LAT, 1909 LAT]
Century [1916]
Omar [1918 LAT, 1920]
Moon [1923 LAT, 1925, 1930, 1930 LAT, 1936, 1942 listed as both Moon & Gayety]
Gayety [1942]
It was the Gaiety by 1938, so perhaps that was the last incarnation.
We know for sure that this was the Moon in 1925, as it was listed as such in the LA city directory.
Correct.
where did you get that? from the library?
Here is the 1908 city directory that shows the Peoples Theater at 523 S. Main:
http://tinyurl.com/2bnoph
The construction date of this theatre must be 1904-1905, then. Here is a photo dated 1904 (this date being the earliest possible, as confirmed by the tall, white building at center, which is the Braley Block on the SE corner of 4th and Spring, completed that year) which shows a house (the one topped by a round turret) occupying the site of this theatre.
A 1905 ad in the LA Times listed the Novelty theater at 523 S. Main. We already have that as an aka for the Liberty at 136 S. Main, but it should be added as an aka for this theater as well.
Grauman’s Metropolitan is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Paramount Grauman only operated it for a few years, and then sold all his downtown interests so he could concentrate on his Hollywood theatres.
The theater I mentioned above, according to the article, was on the NE corner of 6th & Hill in a 12 story office building. The architect is named as William Lee Woollett.
Joe, I was looking for something about the Metropol or Metropolitan that you mentioned above and found a different one called Grauman’s Metropolitan Theater which apparently was being built in 1921. Maybe the name was changed before opening because this one was at 6th & Hill with 4000 seats and done in ‘Oriental’ motif. Does anyone know what this theater was called or if it was ever finished? It almost sounds like Grauman’s Chinese was being built downtown from this article.
As far as I know, davesrailpix.com is the only place that displays the Joe Testagrose collection. In addition to the various L.A. Railways collections (Testagrose’s is one of several L.A. Railway collections there, though it’s the largest by far), the site also has Pacific Electric pictures, also accessible from their main page
Ken Roe added the 1902 Tally’s Electric on Main Street to the site the other day, but under its last known name, Glockner’s Automatic Theatre.
I wonder if one of us should put the Electric Theater on CT. If its not a myth, there are numerous sources claiming it as the first theater in the US and some claiming in the world. If this is true it should have a special place on this site. I wonder if there is a way to see more of the Joe Testagrose collection of photos. Those color photos are beautiful.
From the Dave’s Railpix collection, Main Street in 1947, showing a glimpse of the Gaiety’s marquee at far right and, above and behind the streetcar in the foreground, the fancy top of the Optic Theatre building.
vokoban: The first section of the birds-eye map shows one of the Main Street theatres still missing from Cinema Treasures; Clune’s Theatre on the northwest corner of Main and 5th, where the north tower of the Rosslyn Hotel was built about 1916. (Other missing Main Street Theatres include Miller’s Theatre in the 800 block and Tally’s Electric Theatre as 262 S. Main.)
The middle section of your edited map shows the Empire Theatre on south side of 3rd Street east of Main. I’ve never found any references to that theatre anywhere else, so I don’t know if it was ever a movie theatre or not.
If you open up the full version of the birds-eye map (I never open my copy of it anymore because the huge file overwhelms my computer’s RAM), you’ll see yet another theatre, on the north side of 5th Street, northwest corner of (I think) Wall Street- between Los Angeles Street and San Pedro Street, anyway. If I remember correctly, the map labels it “Metropol” which I guess is an abbreviation of Metropolitan. I don’t know if that one was ever a movie theatre or not either.
Here is a detail of Main street from the 1909 Birdseye map. I had to split it into three parts so that you could still see detail and it wouldn’t be too long. If you print out all three and then cut them out, they should line up as a continous Main street.
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I didn’t even notice the 529 address…pretty interesting. I don’t know if this has been posted, but here’s a photo from USC that says its from 1907 that shows the Peoples Theatre. I don’t know how accurate the date is.
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523 shows “Movies,” 529 shows “mov'g picts” and 533 shows “moving pictures.”
533 should be the Optic Theater, and 529 (apparently a very narrow space per this map) is the Star Theater.
Great map! Gives a lot more info.
And apparently we can confirm the People’s Theater as the first incarnation of this space. This space gives the Mozart a run for its money for all its different names.
In the map detail I posted above, does anyone know what theater was at 533 S. Main? It just says ‘Moving Pictures’.
Here is a detail from a 1906 Sanborn map that shows this address. I don’t see a name for the theater, but the auditorium is labeled with ‘Movies’.
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