Roosevelt Theatre
212 N. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90012
212 N. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90012
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Showing 26 - 36 of 36 comments
Something is strange here….doesn’t the electric theater have its own page? 212 N. Main is listed as Electric Theater in the City Directory for these years: 1915, 1916, 1920, 1923 LAT, 1930, 1936
This article seems to say that there were two different theaters:
(Nov. 27, 1938)
Glamorous Vilma Vidal, featured in the 12-reel production, “Refugiados en Madrid,” currently showing at the California, Electric and Roosevelt theaters, has been voted in both the Argentine and in Mexico as the “actress with the perfect diction.”
The 1942 City Directory lists a Roosevelt at 216 N. Main. I wonder if its a misprint.
The Roosevelt Theatre at 8th and Vermont, renamed Chotiner’s Parisian Theatre in the 1930s, is listed here as the Fox Parisian.
In 1925, the LA Times advertised another Roosevelt theater. This one was at 8th and Vermont.
ken mc: 842 S. Main was (according to a 1914 newspaper article quoted by vokoban in a December 22, 2005 comment on the Optic Theatre page) the location of Miller’s Theatre, about midway between the California Theatre and 9th Street. (Miller’s still hasn’t been added to Cinema Treasures.) It seems possible that the operators of the Roosevelt at 212 N. Main lost their lease and moved their operation to the old Miller’s location. It would have been easy for the N. Main building to revert to its earlier name of the Electric Theatre, as the marquee only had the generic word “Theatre” (or is that “Theater”… the photo I linked to last October is a bit blurry) on it.
The 1939 LA city directory lists the Electric at 212 N. Main. The Roosevelt (or a Roosevelt, I suppose) was listed at 842 S. Main.
No relation as far as I know, though the extended family was quite large, so there were a lot of Vogels around L.A. by the late 19th century who were fairly close relatives of my great grandfather. But then it’s also a fairly common surname, so there were also quite a few Vogels to whom I’d probably not be related. I don’t know if I’m related to the owners of the Vogel Block which stood at the southwest corner of 7th and Broadway until it was demolished to make way for Loew’s State Theatre, either.
The proprietor of the buffet lunch at the US Hotel was Max Vogel. Any connection, Joe?
In 1923, the Roosevelt was operating under the name Electric Theatre.
The theatre in the picture to which ken mc linked above is definitely the Roosevelt. Another photograph from the USC archive shows the intersection of Main and Market Streets in 1935. The marquee of the theatre can be recognized at the far left. The address of the U.S. Hotel at the corner of Main and Market is given as 170 N.Main, so the address of the theatre in the next block can be reasonably assumed to be 212 N Main.
Eventually, all the buildings in these photos were demolished as part of the expansion of the civic center. The site of the Roosevelt Theatre is now the location of the eastward extension of Temple Street which was built in 1960.
This may be the Roosevelt in 1936:
http://tinyurl.com/zwah2
The Roosevelt Theatre is listed in the Film Daily Yearbook’s 1941 and 1943 as having 800 seats and closed.
By the 1950 and 1952 editions of the F.D.Y. it is listed as open and having 340 seats.
The site where the theatre stood now has civic buildings built on it.