San Francisco’s Telenews Theatre was the first in a chain that would eventually expand to 13 newsreel houses, according to a web page about the history of newsreels from the University of San Diego (I found the University’s website to be a massively unusable mess, so here’s Google’s cache of the page.)
This page at the Dallas Historical Society’s website has a couple of articles about Telenews Theatre in Dallas, including one about the grand opening. The 1941 article says that the Dallas Telenews was the 11th in the chain. It gives a description of way the place operated which probably applies to the other theatres in the chain as well.
The first article at the Dallas site names one Herbert Scheftel as the president of Telenews. Scheftel, it turns out, went on to be a pioneer in the television and cable industries as well as a real estate mogul who was one of those responsible for New York’s monstrous Pan Am Building, and he died as recently as 2000. Neither his obituary in the New York Times nor his paid death notice in the same paper mentions Telenews, but the latter does lead with the fact that he was the grandson of Ida and Isadore Straus, the elderly couple who owned Macy’s Department Store and who famously made their final journey to Davy Jones' Locker on board the Titanic. I wish newspapers would get their priorities straight. We want to know about the theatres, dammit!
Incidentally, on page 41 of Jack Tillmany’s book “Theatres of San Francisco” there’s a photo of the entrance to the San Francisco Telenews, showing the yards and yards of neon in the splendid soffit that extended from under the marquee all the way to the front doors. Sitting on the terrazzo was a stuffed polar bear, it’s slightly-open maw no match for that of the theatre.
All the cards (there are four) in the L.A. Library’s California Index referencing the architect of this theatre spell his name Meinardus. Elimor E.B. Meinardus also designed Jensen’s Recreation Center in Echo Park, which also survives and is a city landmarked building.
A July 23,2007, article from the Peninsula Examiner (Google cache because the Examiner’s website bites big) said that this theatre opened in 1930. The article also said that a developer had recently applied for a permit to demolish the building, to make way for a mixed use development. There’s a photo of the exterior which looks as though it’s been pretty drastically altered already, with the whole front walled up. There’s probably even less left to lose inside.
One thing I find very interesting about the c1946 photo of linked by TC is that there’s a dog lounging on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Yep, that’s Sierra Madre, alright!
This theatre was probably built in 1923. This card in the California Index gives the name of the architect, but it’s unreadable. Somebody needed to change the ribbon in the typewriter. Is that supposed to be an “M” by any chance? J.T. Meller?
For the purposes of those who would like to save buildings, our personal definitions of the word landmark are of no relevance anyway. If the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission says that a pile of decaying wood is a landmark, then that pile of wood gets official protection. If the commission says that one of the last surviving theatres designed by noted local architect Harold Levitt is not a landmark, then the theatre goes without that protection, no matter how many of us consider it a valuable example of late midcentury modern design and worthy of preservation.
There’s also the matter of the New Star Theatre at 2698 W. Pico. I still haven’t found it here under any other name, so it might not be listed yet. I generated a property report for that address and the building on that site (SE corner of Pico and Fedora) was built in 1905, so it’s another probable survivor. It’s neighborhood included the Midway Theatre at 3138 Pico and the Victoria Theatre at 2570.
Assessor information for the building at 8516-8518-8522 S. San Pedro says that it was built in 1925 and has just over 5800 sq. ft. The land is valued at $124,124 while the building is valued at $346,122, so the church that now occupies it obviously isn’t letting it fall apart.
An interesting card turned up in the California Index, citing a Times article that announced the grand opening of the Tivoli Theatre at 16 Court Street on October 18, 1890. This is relevant to the Cineograph Theatre because it was some time around 1900 that Los Angeles changed its street numbering system which, until then, had always begun with single and double digit numbers in the first blocks east and west of Main Street and north and south of 1st Street. After the change, numbers still began at Main and 1st Streets, but started with three digit numbers, 100 and up. Thus, 16 Court Street (Court never extended east of Main and so didn’t need the appellation West) probably corresponded to 114 Court Street, the address of the Cineograph in 1902. The Cineograph was apparently the Tivoli, renamed.
Assessor information for the address 2710 S. San Pedro St. describes it as a parcel of just over 3000 sq. ft., occupied by a building of 2400 sq. ft. which was erected in 1910. It currently serves as a print shop. Unless the address has been shifted since 1923, this building must be the same one then occupied by the Star Theater.
I just realized that the Panorama’s dark, round roof is partly visible in this old favorite photo, too, sticking up from behind the King Edward Hotel at extreme right.
I remember now that I’d previously seen that picture I linked to, but it had never dawned on me that the Panorama Building was in it. I was focusing on Main Street or on the overall view, and didn’t notice the details off to the side.
Here’s a ca.1910 aerial photo showing the Hippodrome site vacant except for what might be either rubble or construction materials (the dark, round thing might even be the remains of the panorama’s foundation), so I’m sure the whole rear portion of the Panorama Building was demolished to make way for the Hippodrome’s auditorium, but I’ve wondered myself if the front building that later housed the Main Street Gym wasn’t merely remodeled from the earlier building on the site.
The Empire is still pretty much a mystery. So fa it hasn’t appeared among the movie houses advertised in newspapers of the time, or in the lists of movie houses in early city directories unearthed so far. Maybe it was exclusively a live venue. Its odd location probably accounts for its early demise as a theatre of any sort though. A few blocks east and it probably could have survived as a neighborhood movie house for quite a while, and up the block at the corner of Main it would have been solidly ensconced at the head of the theatre district that didn’t begin to undergo serious shrinkage until the 1940s.
I must have stopped getting e-mail notifications of new comments on this page several months ago. I’ve missed about three months of comments.
Anyway, here’s news about the Panorama Building, which preceded the Hippodrome Theatre on the Main Street site. It turns out that Panoramas were a huge business in the 19th century, and many cities had buildings erected specifically for their display. Here’s a fairly long and detailed review of a 1997 book about this vanished form of what today would probably be called infotainment.
Almost as good, I finally tracked down a photo which shows at least the top and part of the south side of the big, round Panorama Building itself, here at the USC digital archive, not surprisingly. The Panorama Building is a couple of blocks distant in this view, at far right, partly concealed by the Westminster Hotel and other buildings along East 4th Street.
The photo dates from New Year’s Day of 1907, so it was taken during the building’s last era, when it was being used as a skating rink. According to the Los Angeles Daily Journal of August 15, 1907, Adolph Ramish had been issued a permit to demolish the structure.
There was at least one building that was declared a cultural-historic monument by the City of Los Angeles when it was only 42 years old; the 1958 Holiday Bowl on Crenshaw, by Armet & Davis, was declared in 2000. Unfortunately, the declaration was not enough to save the place and it was demolished in 2003. There may be other buildings that were declared when they were even newer, but I’m unaware of them.
It’s possible that declaring buildings so recent has actually emboldened owners of interesting, potentially landmarkable structures to try to get rid of them or drastically alter them before they get to the age where they might be declared. Maybe that’s why the owners of the National are so eager to tear it down now. In a few years years there might be so many supporters of landmarking the building that it would be too late for the owners to easily get a permit to demolish it.
The building lots on the west side of the 700 block of S. Main Street are not very deep. A theatre at 729 S. would have very pretty small unless the building went through to Spring Street. I still think the 729 S. Main location may have been Clune’s offices rather than one of his theatres, but it’s also possible that it was the site of a very early precursor of his bigger theatres, and maybe even of his first nickelodeon.
Also, I’ve found some evidence that the Rosslyn’s 5th and Main building opened in 1915. It was planned as early as 1911, but construction apparently didn’t get underway until early 1914. Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main had a very short run indeed.
Or I might have overlooked it, since I keep forgetting to enlarge the page in my browser when reading that pale text (I wish it had a “darken” function as well as the enlarging function.)
The 1930s photo I linked to on October 12, 2006, showing the theatre when it was called the Studio, has vanished from the USC digital archives altogether. Maybe the archives lost track of it when they were redesigning their website. Fortunately, there’s still a photo from the L.A. library showing the theatre’s marquee when it was called the Studio. It’s essentially the same as the Mirror marquee in the picture ken mc linked to on November 8 of this year.
This creates a bit of a problem with the time-line of the theatre.
S. Charles Lee’s plans for remodeling the Mirror into the Studio, including adding a new marquee, were announced in 1936, and it looks like this marquee already existed by 1936. So did Lee not design a new marquee after all, or was the rather austere CBS Radio Playhouse marquee the one he designed in 1936, or do we just not yet have a photo of his short-lived marquee?
Yes, it was the Huntington Hartford Theatre for some thirty years, from 1954 until at least 1984, longer than it bore any of its other names. It was Hartford who caused the original facade to be stripped away and replaced with the bland exterior the building wore for most of its history. The interior was gutted at that same time. The current facade is more a homage to than an actual recreation of the original that was lost to Hartford’s remodeling. For all practical purposes, none of Myron Hunt’s original work on the Vine Street Theatre remains.
The Doolittle name was in honor of James Doolittle, an impresario who for many years programed the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, and then programmed the Hartford itself for a while starting in the mid-1960s. I think the theatre was called the Doolittle for about a dozen years.
Also missing is the one aka under which this house operated exclusively as a movie theatre, the Mirror Theatre. I’m sure that Lux Radio Playhouse was not an actual name the theatre itself bore, but was merely the name of one of the programs CBS broadcast from the house during its years as the Studio Theatre (another missing aka) and then as the CBS Radio Playhouse (not CBS Radio Theatre.)
For a full list of the theatre’s names in sequence see Ken Roe’s comment of January 1, 2005 above.
Most likely the luggage store now sprawls through several buildings. I noticed that in the Flickr photo you linked to there’s an arrow marked “Entrance” pointing south above the door where the theatre’s foyer once was.
Also I’m not positive about the Valley West name as an aka. Lavar reported it only as a rumor, and I haven’t found any confirmation anywhere. In the 1966 ad ken mc linked to it’s the Baronet, and as the building was built in 1961 and the place probably closed not long after August 1986, that doesn’t leave much time for the Valley West name to have been in use, if it ever was.
No, wait, it’s not Woodland Hills. I rechecked the map and Vanowen marks the change from 6700/6800 N block of Topanga Canyon, so the 6900 block remains in Canoga Park.
I should clarify that the theatre was in Canoga Park, but the building’s postal address today is in Woodland Hills due to a change made in 1992. A quarter section bounded by Victory, Vanowen, Topanga and Shoup was withdrawn from Canoga Park and added to Woodland Hills that year.
Boulevard is the name under which the theatre is listed in the L.A. Times Calender section on August 24, 1986. It is showing two features but there’s no indication that it’s a twin theatre. Admission price was $1.50. Quite a few older theatres were still showing double features in 1986, so I’m thinking it was probably a discount double feature house at that time.
In one comment above Lavar says that it closed in 1985, but it was still open in August 1986, so I’d guess that it probably closed not long after then and never got twinned.
Yes, the Baronet is the same theatre as the Boulevard. Boulevard is the more recent name. Comment by Lavar on January 25 above says that it may have been aka the Valley West for a time. Assessor information says the building at 6937-6939 Topanga Canyon was built in 1961. Lavar also pointed out that the theatre was in the Canoga Park district, not the Woodland Hills District.
San Francisco’s Telenews Theatre was the first in a chain that would eventually expand to 13 newsreel houses, according to a web page about the history of newsreels from the University of San Diego (I found the University’s website to be a massively unusable mess, so here’s Google’s cache of the page.)
This page at the Dallas Historical Society’s website has a couple of articles about Telenews Theatre in Dallas, including one about the grand opening. The 1941 article says that the Dallas Telenews was the 11th in the chain. It gives a description of way the place operated which probably applies to the other theatres in the chain as well.
The first article at the Dallas site names one Herbert Scheftel as the president of Telenews. Scheftel, it turns out, went on to be a pioneer in the television and cable industries as well as a real estate mogul who was one of those responsible for New York’s monstrous Pan Am Building, and he died as recently as 2000. Neither his obituary in the New York Times nor his paid death notice in the same paper mentions Telenews, but the latter does lead with the fact that he was the grandson of Ida and Isadore Straus, the elderly couple who owned Macy’s Department Store and who famously made their final journey to Davy Jones' Locker on board the Titanic. I wish newspapers would get their priorities straight. We want to know about the theatres, dammit!
Incidentally, on page 41 of Jack Tillmany’s book “Theatres of San Francisco” there’s a photo of the entrance to the San Francisco Telenews, showing the yards and yards of neon in the splendid soffit that extended from under the marquee all the way to the front doors. Sitting on the terrazzo was a stuffed polar bear, it’s slightly-open maw no match for that of the theatre.
All the cards (there are four) in the L.A. Library’s California Index referencing the architect of this theatre spell his name Meinardus. Elimor E.B. Meinardus also designed Jensen’s Recreation Center in Echo Park, which also survives and is a city landmarked building.
A July 23,2007, article from the Peninsula Examiner (Google cache because the Examiner’s website bites big) said that this theatre opened in 1930. The article also said that a developer had recently applied for a permit to demolish the building, to make way for a mixed use development. There’s a photo of the exterior which looks as though it’s been pretty drastically altered already, with the whole front walled up. There’s probably even less left to lose inside.
Dick Sylvester: Cinema Treasures has a page devoted to the Worcester, Mass. Warner Theatre:
/theaters/6865/
One thing I find very interesting about the c1946 photo of linked by TC is that there’s a dog lounging on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. Yep, that’s Sierra Madre, alright!
This theatre was probably built in 1923. This card in the California Index gives the name of the architect, but it’s unreadable. Somebody needed to change the ribbon in the typewriter. Is that supposed to be an “M” by any chance? J.T. Meller?
Are you guys going to fight? Is it OK if I watch?
For the purposes of those who would like to save buildings, our personal definitions of the word landmark are of no relevance anyway. If the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission says that a pile of decaying wood is a landmark, then that pile of wood gets official protection. If the commission says that one of the last surviving theatres designed by noted local architect Harold Levitt is not a landmark, then the theatre goes without that protection, no matter how many of us consider it a valuable example of late midcentury modern design and worthy of preservation.
There’s also the matter of the New Star Theatre at 2698 W. Pico. I still haven’t found it here under any other name, so it might not be listed yet. I generated a property report for that address and the building on that site (SE corner of Pico and Fedora) was built in 1905, so it’s another probable survivor. It’s neighborhood included the Midway Theatre at 3138 Pico and the Victoria Theatre at 2570.
Assessor information for the building at 8516-8518-8522 S. San Pedro says that it was built in 1925 and has just over 5800 sq. ft. The land is valued at $124,124 while the building is valued at $346,122, so the church that now occupies it obviously isn’t letting it fall apart.
An interesting card turned up in the California Index, citing a Times article that announced the grand opening of the Tivoli Theatre at 16 Court Street on October 18, 1890. This is relevant to the Cineograph Theatre because it was some time around 1900 that Los Angeles changed its street numbering system which, until then, had always begun with single and double digit numbers in the first blocks east and west of Main Street and north and south of 1st Street. After the change, numbers still began at Main and 1st Streets, but started with three digit numbers, 100 and up. Thus, 16 Court Street (Court never extended east of Main and so didn’t need the appellation West) probably corresponded to 114 Court Street, the address of the Cineograph in 1902. The Cineograph was apparently the Tivoli, renamed.
Assessor information for the address 2710 S. San Pedro St. describes it as a parcel of just over 3000 sq. ft., occupied by a building of 2400 sq. ft. which was erected in 1910. It currently serves as a print shop. Unless the address has been shifted since 1923, this building must be the same one then occupied by the Star Theater.
I just realized that the Panorama’s dark, round roof is partly visible in this old favorite photo, too, sticking up from behind the King Edward Hotel at extreme right.
I remember now that I’d previously seen that picture I linked to, but it had never dawned on me that the Panorama Building was in it. I was focusing on Main Street or on the overall view, and didn’t notice the details off to the side.
Here’s a ca.1910 aerial photo showing the Hippodrome site vacant except for what might be either rubble or construction materials (the dark, round thing might even be the remains of the panorama’s foundation), so I’m sure the whole rear portion of the Panorama Building was demolished to make way for the Hippodrome’s auditorium, but I’ve wondered myself if the front building that later housed the Main Street Gym wasn’t merely remodeled from the earlier building on the site.
The Empire is still pretty much a mystery. So fa it hasn’t appeared among the movie houses advertised in newspapers of the time, or in the lists of movie houses in early city directories unearthed so far. Maybe it was exclusively a live venue. Its odd location probably accounts for its early demise as a theatre of any sort though. A few blocks east and it probably could have survived as a neighborhood movie house for quite a while, and up the block at the corner of Main it would have been solidly ensconced at the head of the theatre district that didn’t begin to undergo serious shrinkage until the 1940s.
I must have stopped getting e-mail notifications of new comments on this page several months ago. I’ve missed about three months of comments.
Anyway, here’s news about the Panorama Building, which preceded the Hippodrome Theatre on the Main Street site. It turns out that Panoramas were a huge business in the 19th century, and many cities had buildings erected specifically for their display. Here’s a fairly long and detailed review of a 1997 book about this vanished form of what today would probably be called infotainment.
Almost as good, I finally tracked down a photo which shows at least the top and part of the south side of the big, round Panorama Building itself, here at the USC digital archive, not surprisingly. The Panorama Building is a couple of blocks distant in this view, at far right, partly concealed by the Westminster Hotel and other buildings along East 4th Street.
The photo dates from New Year’s Day of 1907, so it was taken during the building’s last era, when it was being used as a skating rink. According to the Los Angeles Daily Journal of August 15, 1907, Adolph Ramish had been issued a permit to demolish the structure.
There was at least one building that was declared a cultural-historic monument by the City of Los Angeles when it was only 42 years old; the 1958 Holiday Bowl on Crenshaw, by Armet & Davis, was declared in 2000. Unfortunately, the declaration was not enough to save the place and it was demolished in 2003. There may be other buildings that were declared when they were even newer, but I’m unaware of them.
It’s possible that declaring buildings so recent has actually emboldened owners of interesting, potentially landmarkable structures to try to get rid of them or drastically alter them before they get to the age where they might be declared. Maybe that’s why the owners of the National are so eager to tear it down now. In a few years years there might be so many supporters of landmarking the building that it would be too late for the owners to easily get a permit to demolish it.
The building lots on the west side of the 700 block of S. Main Street are not very deep. A theatre at 729 S. would have very pretty small unless the building went through to Spring Street. I still think the 729 S. Main location may have been Clune’s offices rather than one of his theatres, but it’s also possible that it was the site of a very early precursor of his bigger theatres, and maybe even of his first nickelodeon.
Also, I’ve found some evidence that the Rosslyn’s 5th and Main building opened in 1915. It was planned as early as 1911, but construction apparently didn’t get underway until early 1914. Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main had a very short run indeed.
The El Monte was built for Arthur Sanborn, founder of Sanborn Theatres, which today operates using the name The Movie Experience.
Here’s a pre-construction architect’s rendering of the Kuhio Theatre.
Or I might have overlooked it, since I keep forgetting to enlarge the page in my browser when reading that pale text (I wish it had a “darken” function as well as the enlarging function.)
The 1930s photo I linked to on October 12, 2006, showing the theatre when it was called the Studio, has vanished from the USC digital archives altogether. Maybe the archives lost track of it when they were redesigning their website. Fortunately, there’s still a photo from the L.A. library showing the theatre’s marquee when it was called the Studio. It’s essentially the same as the Mirror marquee in the picture ken mc linked to on November 8 of this year.
This creates a bit of a problem with the time-line of the theatre.
S. Charles Lee’s plans for remodeling the Mirror into the Studio, including adding a new marquee, were announced in 1936, and it looks like this marquee already existed by 1936. So did Lee not design a new marquee after all, or was the rather austere CBS Radio Playhouse marquee the one he designed in 1936, or do we just not yet have a photo of his short-lived marquee?
Yes, it was the Huntington Hartford Theatre for some thirty years, from 1954 until at least 1984, longer than it bore any of its other names. It was Hartford who caused the original facade to be stripped away and replaced with the bland exterior the building wore for most of its history. The interior was gutted at that same time. The current facade is more a homage to than an actual recreation of the original that was lost to Hartford’s remodeling. For all practical purposes, none of Myron Hunt’s original work on the Vine Street Theatre remains.
The Doolittle name was in honor of James Doolittle, an impresario who for many years programed the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, and then programmed the Hartford itself for a while starting in the mid-1960s. I think the theatre was called the Doolittle for about a dozen years.
Also missing is the one aka under which this house operated exclusively as a movie theatre, the Mirror Theatre. I’m sure that Lux Radio Playhouse was not an actual name the theatre itself bore, but was merely the name of one of the programs CBS broadcast from the house during its years as the Studio Theatre (another missing aka) and then as the CBS Radio Playhouse (not CBS Radio Theatre.)
For a full list of the theatre’s names in sequence see Ken Roe’s comment of January 1, 2005 above.
BC: The Marina 3 is listed at Cinema Treasures under its original name, the Strand Theater.
Most likely the luggage store now sprawls through several buildings. I noticed that in the Flickr photo you linked to there’s an arrow marked “Entrance” pointing south above the door where the theatre’s foyer once was.
Also I’m not positive about the Valley West name as an aka. Lavar reported it only as a rumor, and I haven’t found any confirmation anywhere. In the 1966 ad ken mc linked to it’s the Baronet, and as the building was built in 1961 and the place probably closed not long after August 1986, that doesn’t leave much time for the Valley West name to have been in use, if it ever was.
No, wait, it’s not Woodland Hills. I rechecked the map and Vanowen marks the change from 6700/6800 N block of Topanga Canyon, so the 6900 block remains in Canoga Park.
I should clarify that the theatre was in Canoga Park, but the building’s postal address today is in Woodland Hills due to a change made in 1992. A quarter section bounded by Victory, Vanowen, Topanga and Shoup was withdrawn from Canoga Park and added to Woodland Hills that year.
Boulevard is the name under which the theatre is listed in the L.A. Times Calender section on August 24, 1986. It is showing two features but there’s no indication that it’s a twin theatre. Admission price was $1.50. Quite a few older theatres were still showing double features in 1986, so I’m thinking it was probably a discount double feature house at that time.
In one comment above Lavar says that it closed in 1985, but it was still open in August 1986, so I’d guess that it probably closed not long after then and never got twinned.
Yes, the Baronet is the same theatre as the Boulevard. Boulevard is the more recent name. Comment by Lavar on January 25 above says that it may have been aka the Valley West for a time. Assessor information says the building at 6937-6939 Topanga Canyon was built in 1961. Lavar also pointed out that the theatre was in the Canoga Park district, not the Woodland Hills District.