Listed in the 1929 City Directory as the Pico. The 700 W. block begins at Figueroa, and the 900 block began at Georgia Street, so this place must have been closer to Figueroa than to Georgia. The 1923 ad ken mc linked to must have been for a different theater.
The best candidate for the El Sereno Theater to which the organ was delivered is probably still the Cameo, which opened in 1924. However, it’s listed under the name Cameo in the 1925 city directory page ken mc linked to in his October 18, 2008 comment on the Aloha Theatre page. No El Sereno Theater is listed in that directory. It seems unlikely that they’d have opened as the El Sereno and changed the name to Cameo only few months later. My best guess is that the owners of the Cameo didn’t choose the theater’s name until construction was well advanced and the organ already delivered.
I would guess it was already a nightclub in 1967 then, and it had an adult movie theatre as one of its attractions. But it doesn’t appear at all- not even among the porn movies- in the listings of the L.A. Times for February 10, 1971, the earliest Times listings I have at hand.
The place was called Carolina West Century Lounge (a.k.a. Century Theatre) when it was reviewed for this web site, surely within our current decade (Internets being fairly new and all.) After reading the description of what goes on there, I urgently desire never to visit it, and especially not to touch anything within it.
I still suspect the building of having been built as a bowling alley, if it wasn’t a nightclub from the beginning. It’s all wrong (and in the wrong location) for a big movie theater.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1940 and an effective construction date of 1949 for the building at 3355 N. Eastern Avenue. Unless they’ve made a mistake (it’s been known to happen), this was not the El Sereno Theatre which got an organ in 1924. As I said in an earlier comment, this building does look like it was built in the 1930s or 1940s, even on its back and side walls, so the assessor’s office is probably right about the date.
The Assessor’s Office says this 30,000 square foot building was built in 1959. It doesn’t look to me like it was ever a movie theater. I don’t remember there being one in that area, either.
This house was still listed as the Garden Theatre in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1935 for the building at this address, but judging from the photo linked in Lost Memory’s comment of August 10, 2007, I’d say the Assessor’s office is in error. The style of the brickwork on that facade was very popular in the 1910s, and I’ve never seen it used on any building erected as late as 1935. The building probably does date from 1914.
I wonder if this could be the same house advertised in the Los Angeles Times movie listings of November 9, 1914, as Gore’s Theatre. Operated by Mike Gore, it was located at 9th and Georgia Streets.
The 1929 L.A. City Directory has the Graham Theatre listed at 1703 E. Firestone Boulevard, which would be at the northeast corner of Firestone and Graham Avenue. The building on the site now is a small commercial structure for which the County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1946, with an addition dating from 1964. The lot next door is vacant. Looks like the Graham Theatre is long gone.
L.A. County now has its records online, and the building adjacent the Balboa Theatre to the south has an address of 8719 S. Vermont, so the Jurdan Theater’s address would indeed have placed it on the same parcel now occupied by the former Balboa Theatre.
Not only should the address be changed to 3937 Whittier Boulevard, the location should be changed to East Los Angeles, as the address is east of Indiana Street and thus outside the Los Angeles city limits.
I guess we can accept the opening date of 1927 for the Cozy, as it’s listed in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory. Still no more word on Albert C. Martin as the architect of either the 1905 building or the later theater conversion, though.
The Central Theatre is listed at this address in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory. I don’t have access to any earlier directories, so that’s the earliest I can confirm that it was open.
This is one of three Village Centre Cinemas locations designed for the same client by Design West Architects. The other two are in Spokane and in Lewiston, Idaho.
Design West’s website features two photos of one of the projects. Though the page does not specify which of the three locations is depicted, the exterior photo certainly resembles the Pullman location as depicted on this web page at the developer’s website.
There are also a few small pictures at pullmanmovies.com, which appears to be this theatre’s official website. Currently, there doesn’t appear to be a main website for the operating company, Best Theatres Inc.
Los Angeleno: The theater on Central at Jefferson is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Florence Mills Theatre. It is the oldest of the three theaters you mention, having been erected in 1912, and known to have been operating as the Globe Theatre in 1914.
The theater in this ca. 1954 postcard must be the Roxy. Part of the name is covered by a banner of some sort, and the scan is a bit blurry, but the trapezoidal marquee fits the description by Gary Parks. I don’t recall ever seeing the place myself.
The Home Theatre was mentioned in the L.A. Times in 1925, and in Motion Picture Herald in 1932, according to cards in the California Index.
Is there any evidence other than photo captions by Flickr users that this place ever operated under the name Davis Theatre? As the name Davis belongs to the furniture company now using the building it seems most likely that, when a theater, it was always called the Overton, and the furniture store’s owners just painted their name over the original name on the vertical sign when they took over the building.
Cinematour’s page for this theater has information about it provided by Overtonite (Overtonian?) Charles Creekmur, and he says nothing about the theatre ever having had any name other than Overton. The page also links to a 1967 playbill for the Overton Theatre, so it was still using that name at that time.
The L.A. County assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1933 for the main building on this lot, with an effective construction date of 1947. A smaller adjacent building was built in 1971. Live Search bird’s eye view indicates that the newer building is east of the theater building. The whole parcel is given the address of 4665 Melrose.
The theater building is only 5,060 sq. ft., and it has a corner of the back cut out, so I’m guessing the auditorium was only about 40' wide and no more than 100' deep. It was just a small neighborhood house, probably with no more than 300-400 seats.
The small theater near 5th on Broadway in that 1917 photo has an eagle (which looks to be covered in light bulbs) above the entrance, which would certainly fit with the name American Theatre. I have no doubt that it is the American Theatre, as it’s definitely in the building I cited in my comment of Sep 27, 2007, above.
The URL of the picture has changed, but pasting the call number CHS-9694 into the Digital Archive’s search box still brings it up.
Listed in the 1929 City Directory as the Pico. The 700 W. block begins at Figueroa, and the 900 block began at Georgia Street, so this place must have been closer to Figueroa than to Georgia. The 1923 ad ken mc linked to must have been for a different theater.
The best candidate for the El Sereno Theater to which the organ was delivered is probably still the Cameo, which opened in 1924. However, it’s listed under the name Cameo in the 1925 city directory page ken mc linked to in his October 18, 2008 comment on the Aloha Theatre page. No El Sereno Theater is listed in that directory. It seems unlikely that they’d have opened as the El Sereno and changed the name to Cameo only few months later. My best guess is that the owners of the Cameo didn’t choose the theater’s name until construction was well advanced and the organ already delivered.
I would guess it was already a nightclub in 1967 then, and it had an adult movie theatre as one of its attractions. But it doesn’t appear at all- not even among the porn movies- in the listings of the L.A. Times for February 10, 1971, the earliest Times listings I have at hand.
The place was called Carolina West Century Lounge (a.k.a. Century Theatre) when it was reviewed for this web site, surely within our current decade (Internets being fairly new and all.) After reading the description of what goes on there, I urgently desire never to visit it, and especially not to touch anything within it.
I still suspect the building of having been built as a bowling alley, if it wasn’t a nightclub from the beginning. It’s all wrong (and in the wrong location) for a big movie theater.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1940 and an effective construction date of 1949 for the building at 3355 N. Eastern Avenue. Unless they’ve made a mistake (it’s been known to happen), this was not the El Sereno Theatre which got an organ in 1924. As I said in an earlier comment, this building does look like it was built in the 1930s or 1940s, even on its back and side walls, so the assessor’s office is probably right about the date.
In fact, now that I think about it, this building looks like one of those big bowling centers that began popping up all around L.A. in the 1950s.
The Assessor’s Office says this 30,000 square foot building was built in 1959. It doesn’t look to me like it was ever a movie theater. I don’t remember there being one in that area, either.
This house was still listed as the Garden Theatre in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory.
The L.A. County Assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1935 for the building at this address, but judging from the photo linked in Lost Memory’s comment of August 10, 2007, I’d say the Assessor’s office is in error. The style of the brickwork on that facade was very popular in the 1910s, and I’ve never seen it used on any building erected as late as 1935. The building probably does date from 1914.
I wonder if this could be the same house advertised in the Los Angeles Times movie listings of November 9, 1914, as Gore’s Theatre. Operated by Mike Gore, it was located at 9th and Georgia Streets.
The 1929 L.A. City Directory has the Graham Theatre listed at 1703 E. Firestone Boulevard, which would be at the northeast corner of Firestone and Graham Avenue. The building on the site now is a small commercial structure for which the County Assessor’s office gives a construction date of 1946, with an addition dating from 1964. The lot next door is vacant. Looks like the Graham Theatre is long gone.
Listed in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory.
Listed as the Empire Theatre in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory, but with an address of 2129 W. Pico.
L.A. County now has its records online, and the building adjacent the Balboa Theatre to the south has an address of 8719 S. Vermont, so the Jurdan Theater’s address would indeed have placed it on the same parcel now occupied by the former Balboa Theatre.
Not only should the address be changed to 3937 Whittier Boulevard, the location should be changed to East Los Angeles, as the address is east of Indiana Street and thus outside the Los Angeles city limits.
I guess we can accept the opening date of 1927 for the Cozy, as it’s listed in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory. Still no more word on Albert C. Martin as the architect of either the 1905 building or the later theater conversion, though.
The Central Theatre is listed at this address in the 1929 Los Angeles City Directory. I don’t have access to any earlier directories, so that’s the earliest I can confirm that it was open.
This is one of three Village Centre Cinemas locations designed for the same client by Design West Architects. The other two are in Spokane and in Lewiston, Idaho.
Design West’s website features two photos of one of the projects. Though the page does not specify which of the three locations is depicted, the exterior photo certainly resembles the Pullman location as depicted on this web page at the developer’s website.
There are also a few small pictures at pullmanmovies.com, which appears to be this theatre’s official website. Currently, there doesn’t appear to be a main website for the operating company, Best Theatres Inc.
Designed by ADW Architects (formerly Atkinson/Dyer/Watson Architects), of Charlotte, North Carolina. Built in 2004.
Source: Reed Construction Data website.
One image (an architect’s rendering) of the theatre is displayed in the Portfolio:theaters section of the ADW Architects website.
Designed by the firm of Likel Architecture, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. (Source: Reed Construction Data website.)
11021 S. Main is listed as the address of the Tempest Theatre in the 1929 L.A. City Directory, so that should be added as an aka.
Los Angeleno: The theater on Central at Jefferson is listed at Cinema Treasures as the Florence Mills Theatre. It is the oldest of the three theaters you mention, having been erected in 1912, and known to have been operating as the Globe Theatre in 1914.
The L.A. County assessor’s office gives the building at this address a construction date of 1934, with an effective construction date of 1948.
The theater in this ca. 1954 postcard must be the Roxy. Part of the name is covered by a banner of some sort, and the scan is a bit blurry, but the trapezoidal marquee fits the description by Gary Parks. I don’t recall ever seeing the place myself.
The Home Theatre was mentioned in the L.A. Times in 1925, and in Motion Picture Herald in 1932, according to cards in the California Index.
Is there any evidence other than photo captions by Flickr users that this place ever operated under the name Davis Theatre? As the name Davis belongs to the furniture company now using the building it seems most likely that, when a theater, it was always called the Overton, and the furniture store’s owners just painted their name over the original name on the vertical sign when they took over the building.
Cinematour’s page for this theater has information about it provided by Overtonite (Overtonian?) Charles Creekmur, and he says nothing about the theatre ever having had any name other than Overton. The page also links to a 1967 playbill for the Overton Theatre, so it was still using that name at that time.
The L.A. County assessor’s office gives an original construction date of 1933 for the main building on this lot, with an effective construction date of 1947. A smaller adjacent building was built in 1971. Live Search bird’s eye view indicates that the newer building is east of the theater building. The whole parcel is given the address of 4665 Melrose.
The theater building is only 5,060 sq. ft., and it has a corner of the back cut out, so I’m guessing the auditorium was only about 40' wide and no more than 100' deep. It was just a small neighborhood house, probably with no more than 300-400 seats.
The small theater near 5th on Broadway in that 1917 photo has an eagle (which looks to be covered in light bulbs) above the entrance, which would certainly fit with the name American Theatre. I have no doubt that it is the American Theatre, as it’s definitely in the building I cited in my comment of Sep 27, 2007, above.
The URL of the picture has changed, but pasting the call number CHS-9694 into the Digital Archive’s search box still brings it up.