Hippodrome Theater
314 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
314 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
7 people
favorited this theater
Showing 101 - 125 of 180 comments
fowl play indeed….
Does anyone know if there is a CT page for a Regal theater at 323 S. Main? It shows up in 1906 as the New Star Vaudeville but is in the City Directories for 1915 & 1916 as the Regal. I think this is actually the theater where the Main St. Gym took over. There are a few articles with the Main St. Gym at 321 S. Main and a large fire there. It would have been across the street from the Hippodrome and a few doors north of the Follies.
Several chickens in fact perished at that show in 1907. Police at the time ruled out any fowl play.
There are a lot of articles from the early teens for 320 S. Main for meetings and speakers at an Eagles' Hall. It was probably in the front part of the building and not the auditorium.
That’s a lot of chickens in a skating rink!
(Jan. 6, 1907)
The eighteenth annual poultry and pigeon show of the Los Angeles County Poultry Association will begin tomorrow afternoon in the Panorama building, No. 320 South Main street, and it will continure for the entire week. All day yesterday, and late last night, the skating rink feature of the place was eliminated to give way to the largest poultry exhibit that has ever been assembled here. The entrees received upt to 6 o'clock last evening indicate that over 2000 fowls will be cooped when the show opens to the public.
Here’s a pre-skating rink quote for this address:
(June 30, 1890)
Tomorrow afternoon at the Panorama amphitheater, 320 South Main street, the boys will have a cavalry drill under the instruction of a well-known United States Army officer. There are a few vacancies in the battalion for well-behaved boys between the ages of 12 and 15. The tallest boy of the age of 15 in the city is wanted for color-sergeant.
It looks like the theater closed sometime between 1943 and 1950.
All very helpful. thank you. the Cocoanut or the Palomar Ballroom were not places that most Filipinos (who were immigrant, mostly workers but some students) frequented back in the 1920s and 1930s because of the cost to enter these dance places. And taxi dancehalls are distinct from other dance places. Like many public social institutions, taxi dancehalls practiced segregation (some more blatant, others by its regulations, costs, etc).
Perhaps some of you might be able to point me to image sources for taxi dancehalls such as One Eleven Dance Hall (Main Street), “Danceland” (Main St.), Rizal Cabaret (spring st, b/t 2nd and 3rd), Tiffany Dance Hall (was Liberty Dancehall, Third St. b/t Main and Los Angeles Streets).
The Hippodrome itself was a vaudeville and movie theatre, but the upstairs of the building in front of the auditorium appears to have been a dance hall before it became the location of the Main Street Gym in the early 1950s. Here is the 1928 photo of the block of Main Street south of Third (this is the same photo that’s linked twice above) which shows a small vertical sign that reads “Dancing” on the near end of the Hippodrome’s building. The same sign can be made out beyond the theatre’s marquee in the June, 1943 photo to which ken mc linked a few comments back, on August 23.
So there’s evidence that there was a dance hall in the building from at least 1928 until at least 1943. I’d say there’s a good chance that this is indeed the Hippodrome Dance Palace. As the Main Street Gym, it’s address was 318 ½ S. Main, so that should be the address of the dance hall as well.
From the LA Times archives, it looks like the majority of taxi-dance halls had something to do with Filipinos. There are hundreds of articles from the 20’s until around 1950 about police raids and problems at those places. They called the girls ‘nickel-hoppers’ and later on B-girls.
You’re right. I don’t think it’s the same Hippodrome. The information I’m looking for are the taxi dancehalls frequented by Filipinos in fact. I have a lot of information about it already. I just wanted to see if there are archival images of some of these clubs. My search led me to this LA Hippodrome but I think you are correct. It doesn’t seem like the same Hippodrome.
I don’t think it was the same place just because the history of the building is pretty clear through the years. There seems to have been a Hippodrome Dance Palace, but I can’t find it in the old LA Times archives. Here’s a blurb from a website:
‘Pilipinos were also drawn to taxi-dance halls where they paid ten cents for one-minute of dancing with a White woman. Pilipino musicians would often play some three hundred one-minute tunes at Liberty Dance Palace, Hippodrome Dance Palace, and other clubs near Third Street in LA. Pool halls certainly attracted the young bachelors.'
View link
Is this Hippodrome the same as the Hippodrome Dance Palace?
The tour on this page called The Historic Core is a good tour to start for downtown:
http://laconservancy.org/tours/tours_main.php4
A lot of theaters downtown featured vaudeville and were then converted to movies or they still had both at some of them. I don’t know about the taxi dancing there, though. I don’t know of any theaters that also had a ballroom or dance hall but there could have been. In the 20’s anybody who was anybody would go out to the Cocoanut Grove or to the Palomar Ballroom on Vermont to dance. Here’s a link to the Palomar:
http://www.100megspopup.com/ark/PalomarBlrm.html
Hello. I am new on this cyber community. I am reading up on taxi dancehalls in the 1920s-30s and I have 2 questions. I’m hoping folks here could be of help:
1) Did theatres like the Hippodrome simultaeneously function as vaudeville theater and a taxi dancehall?
2) for LA folks: Can anyone recommend a good tourguide of historic downtown los angeles.
Thank you.
I believe the above picture was taken during the “zoot suit” riots in 1943.
Here is a June 1943 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/22a9vw
You’re correct….the demolition started on the morning of Jan. 4, 1960.
The Westminster was gone before 1963, and a fast food stand had been built on that corner of 4th and Main. Among the stand’s specialties was that Los Angelean version of the loose meat sandwich, the taco burger. With its soft bun and finely shredded lettuce, it was a perfect viand for the toothless derelict seeking a cheap repast. The heavy, tomato-based sauce and the Mexican spices in the ground meat admirably disguised its probable origin as worn-out dairy cow.
Patrons could sit at the wooden tables adjacent to the building and devour their dripping meals while gazing across the vast, paved expanse to the east and north, which included the site where the Hippodrome’s auditorium had once stood. The sharp-eyed might even discern the form of a bum taking a leak against a distant wall. Ah, the good old days before all the romance was gone from downtown.
There has to be a limit on how many lofts you can put downtown and expect to be filled. I walked around for a while after I went to the library and saw that most of the buildings that I remember as vacant from the late nineties now converted to apartments. I also took a spin through the new Ralphs at 9th and Flower.
I think it was demolished in 1963. I wonder if the Van Nuys(Barclay) hotel on the northwest corner of 4th & Main will be restored.
The Medallion will be facing Los Angeles Street, so the gentrification effort is apparently moving eastward. I believe the Westminster was torn down in the early 60s, so that parking lot has been there for a long time.
I’d be nervous living there. I was doing research on the Westminster Hotel which also was on that block and couldn’t believe all of suicides in that hotel….I stopped counting at about 20. Here, drink some carbolic acid and go to bed.
Ken MC: The parking lot “hole” is for the Medallion project that will ultimately hold nine buildings ranging from one to seven stories and have nearly 203,000 square feet of retail, 188 rental units, and an amphitheater.