Soboba was the original name of the theatre, probably named after the Soboba band of Luiseno Indians. There is also a Soboba Hot Springs in the area. The name Sabada has no local associations that I can find. It seems most likely that the FDY was in error.
My source for the opening date and closing year, as well as the correct name and the building’s destruction by fire, is the California Index at the L.A. Library website. Here are two cards citing the L.A. Times:
I’m not sure if the Soboba was the same theatre as the San Jacinto, but it seems likely. In the 1950s, San Jacinto was still a very small town and it was rather isolated. I doubt it would have supported two theatres.
The photo to which Lost Memory linked above confirms that the theatre ran movies. The marquee advertises the 1946 film Murder in the Music Hall with Vera Hruba Ralston and William Marshall.
In regard to ken mc’s comment directly above, I believe I’ve seen, in a photo in the L.A. library collection, a rooftop sign for the Broadway Theatre in the 500 block. The photo is a view south on Broadway from north of 5th Street, and the sign is barely visible. You can make out the word “Theatre” but not the theatre’s name. I’ve searched the collection again, but that particular photo hasn’t come up. I’ll keep trying.
This PDF file (a mere 291K) contains part of a 1986 article from a publication of the San Pedro Historical Society, and there’s a small, ca1965, picture of the Globe at the bottom of the page. The article fragment is mostly about the Cabrillo, but mentions that the Globe was built in 1912.
Having seen the photo my memory has been jogged and I now recall having seen the theatre itself, at least once. My dad patronized a tailor who kept a shop on the other side of 6th Street, up the hill a way. I remember sitting in our parked car in front of the tailor shop and seeing that building down the block. This was in the 1950s. Sixth Street was already very shabby, but also quite impressive, being fairly consistently Victorian and Edwardian in style for the first couple of blocks up from the waterfront, and most of the buildings being solid structures of two or three floors. It was the best collection of such buildings I ever saw in Southern California.
Within a few years it was all demolished for an urban renewal project. Had it been preserved, today that neighborhood could be as popular and valuable as Main Street in Ocean Park or Old Town Pasadena.
The plans for this theatre were announced in a November, 1936, article in the magazine Southwest Builder & Contractor. The architect named was A.A. Cantin.
Lost Memory: The pueblo style theatre in San Jacinto was called the Soboba. It opened on September 9, 1927 and closed in 1951. The building was destroyed by fire in December of 1968. Here’s another photo, dated 1936, before the movie-style marquee was added.
In Southwest Builder & Contractor, issue of 1 August, 1941, there is an announcement that Clifford Balch has made plans for a theatre on Maclay Avenue for Maude L. and John T. Rennie.
The L.A. library’s California Index has a card referencing a Times article from 10/25/1925 with the headline “Theatres purchased at big sum”. The thing I found most interesting, though, is that the card names the theatre as the “Mark Strand”, which was the name of an east coast chain run by the brothers Mitchell and Moe Mark. See the comment by Barry Goodkin on this Cinema Treasures page. I wonder if the Mark Brothers did own this theatre or if there was just some sort of mistake by the person who typed up the library card? Index cards making references to the theatre at later dates just call it the Strand or (beginning in 1936) the Fox Strand.
The principals of the firm of Morgan, Walls, & Morgan were Octavius Morgan (1850-1922), his son Octavius Morgan Jr. (1886-1951) and John A. Walls (1858-1922). Octavius Morgan Sr. was the firm’s lead architect and one of the most prolific architects of his era in Los Angeles. Prior to 1910, when Octavius Jr. was made a partner, the firm had been called Morgan & Walls. Both the elder Morgan and John Walls had earlier been in partnership with the aging Ezra F. Kysor, architect of the Pico House and of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, so the company had fairly deep roots in Los Angeles.
As far as I know, Julia Morgan was not related to Octavius Morgan, personally or professionally. Her office was in San Francisco, and the Hearst’s Examiner Building was her first commission in the southern part of the state, as well as her first project for Hearst. On that project she was associated with the Los Angeles firm of Haenke & Dodd. Her office had sole responsibility for designing Hearst’s castle at San Simeon, which project continued from the 1920s through the 1930s.
LM: The Silent Era source is mistaken. They have conflated the actual Tally’s New Broadway (this theatre, later called the Garnett) at 554 S. Broadway with Tally’s Broadway Theatre at 833 S. Broadway. That was the one demolished in 1929 to make way for the expansion of the May Company southward from its original 8th and Broadway building.
The Garnett has also been demolished, of course, but I’m not sure in what year. It was replaced by the Silverwood’s store, which was there by 1913 (at least if the L.A. Library is right about the date of this photo from their collection.) I believe ScottS is probably correct about the 1893 construction date of the Elden Hotel. The building complex along Mercantile Place which adjoined the hotel property on the north (and was eventually replaced by the Arcade Building) dated from about that same time.
The Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main shows up in the California Index at the L.A. Library website, too. It’s a card referencing a Times ad of May 15, 1909, announcing the opening of the theatre that day.
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.
An aerial view of this theatre from Terraserver shows a building about 120' deep with frontage of about 180' on Western Avenue. Except for the entrance foyer, the frontage looks as though it was occupied by retail shops to a depth of about 50'. The theatre auditorium looks to have been about 70' wide, and was probably about 120'-130' from screen to back wall. I’d have guessed at over 1000 seats for a place that size.
The style looks art moderne, and the building details suggest an early post-WWII construction date rather than a remodeling of something older. My grandparents lived a little more than a dozen blocks from this theatre in the 1950s, but unfortunately when we went to visit them we almost never drove down Western Avenue, and I don’t recall it. There was still quite a bit of new construction going on in the area about that time, though.
That building at far left could be a corner of the California Club, unless it’s the very back of the old Masonic Temple (fronting on Hill Street a few doors north of the College Theatre) which was demolished to make way for the temporary Hill Street Station that operated during the construction of the Subway Terminal building.
The Hill Street Station depicted in that photo was on or adjacent to the Subway Terminal building’s site, just above the middle of the block between 4th and 5th. There had been an interurban depot on that site since 1908. The depot was moved into the Subway Terminal in 1926.
That is the Biltmore beyond the auditorium. That dates the photo at no earlier than 1922. The passenger shed in the picture was demolished in 1924, replaced by a temporary structure farther south, to make way for construction of the Subway Terminal.
Here’s and interesting perspective on this theatre: a photo from about 1922 of the Pacific Electric’s Hill Street Station, and looming behind it are the back and side walls of the Auditorium.
So far, no photos of the Town during its first decade when it was Bard’s Hill Street Theatre have surfaced, but here is a photo from the 1910s showing the east side of Hill Street south of 4th Street. The building which A.C. Martin remodeled for Bard’s Theatre is easy to spot, being the sole one-story structure on the near block, and having a full-width awning.
This picture recently added to the L.A. Library’s on-line photo collection shows Hill Street south of 6th in what is probably the late 1920s. (The library’s information page about the photo misidentifies it as Spring Street ca1920.) At the very left can be seen part of the theatre’s marquee. Another, smaller marquee farther along the same building probably marks the entrance to the dance hall on the second floor.
My source for the September, 1963 closure, April, 1964 fire, and July, 1965 demolition of the charred ruins is an article in the Crenshaw area paper, the News-Advertiser, of July 18, 1965. Pick up a pdf scan of it from the L.A. Library. There’s a barely legible picture of a wall about to get whacked with a big ball.
The Times was right. The Mesa was at Crenshaw and Slauson in the Angeles Mesa district of Los Angeles. Crenshaw and Manchester is in Inglewood. I think the address of 8507 must be wrong. Slauson would be 58th Street if it were numbered, so maybe the first two numbers of the address got transposed when this page was set up?
In the first comment on the page vodvilnut gives a date of 1915 for the construction of this theatre, but the PSTOS page Lost Memory linked to last January gives a construction date of 1911. Both dates also appear at various other sites on the Internet. Can anybody confirm one date or the other? I know that B. Marcus Priteca designed his first Pantages Theatre (in San Francisco) in 1911. Could he have designed and gotten the Seattle house built as well in that same year?
Bway: If you’re still watching this page, the photos RobertR linked to back in 2005 depict the theatre on Vine Street north of Hollywood Boulevard which has been variously known as the Hollywood Playhouse, El Capitan Theater, Hollywood Palace, and the Avalon Hollywood, among other names. Built in 1926, it’s been a playhouse, a television studio (during which time it was the location where Richard Nixon made his famous “Checkers” speech), and a night club, but never a movie theatre. If somebody would lease it for a few months for showing films then we’d be able to give it a page here.
Soboba was the original name of the theatre, probably named after the Soboba band of Luiseno Indians. There is also a Soboba Hot Springs in the area. The name Sabada has no local associations that I can find. It seems most likely that the FDY was in error.
My source for the opening date and closing year, as well as the correct name and the building’s destruction by fire, is the California Index at the L.A. Library website. Here are two cards citing the L.A. Times:
View link
View link
I’m not sure if the Soboba was the same theatre as the San Jacinto, but it seems likely. In the 1950s, San Jacinto was still a very small town and it was rather isolated. I doubt it would have supported two theatres.
The photo to which Lost Memory linked above confirms that the theatre ran movies. The marquee advertises the 1946 film Murder in the Music Hall with Vera Hruba Ralston and William Marshall.
In regard to ken mc’s comment directly above, I believe I’ve seen, in a photo in the L.A. library collection, a rooftop sign for the Broadway Theatre in the 500 block. The photo is a view south on Broadway from north of 5th Street, and the sign is barely visible. You can make out the word “Theatre” but not the theatre’s name. I’ve searched the collection again, but that particular photo hasn’t come up. I’ll keep trying.
This PDF file (a mere 291K) contains part of a 1986 article from a publication of the San Pedro Historical Society, and there’s a small, ca1965, picture of the Globe at the bottom of the page. The article fragment is mostly about the Cabrillo, but mentions that the Globe was built in 1912.
Having seen the photo my memory has been jogged and I now recall having seen the theatre itself, at least once. My dad patronized a tailor who kept a shop on the other side of 6th Street, up the hill a way. I remember sitting in our parked car in front of the tailor shop and seeing that building down the block. This was in the 1950s. Sixth Street was already very shabby, but also quite impressive, being fairly consistently Victorian and Edwardian in style for the first couple of blocks up from the waterfront, and most of the buildings being solid structures of two or three floors. It was the best collection of such buildings I ever saw in Southern California.
Within a few years it was all demolished for an urban renewal project. Had it been preserved, today that neighborhood could be as popular and valuable as Main Street in Ocean Park or Old Town Pasadena.
The plans for this theatre were announced in a November, 1936, article in the magazine Southwest Builder & Contractor. The architect named was A.A. Cantin.
Lost Memory: The pueblo style theatre in San Jacinto was called the Soboba. It opened on September 9, 1927 and closed in 1951. The building was destroyed by fire in December of 1968. Here’s another photo, dated 1936, before the movie-style marquee was added.
In Southwest Builder & Contractor, issue of 1 August, 1941, there is an announcement that Clifford Balch has made plans for a theatre on Maclay Avenue for Maude L. and John T. Rennie.
The L.A. library’s California Index has a card referencing a Times article from 10/25/1925 with the headline “Theatres purchased at big sum”. The thing I found most interesting, though, is that the card names the theatre as the “Mark Strand”, which was the name of an east coast chain run by the brothers Mitchell and Moe Mark. See the comment by Barry Goodkin on this Cinema Treasures page. I wonder if the Mark Brothers did own this theatre or if there was just some sort of mistake by the person who typed up the library card? Index cards making references to the theatre at later dates just call it the Strand or (beginning in 1936) the Fox Strand.
Call letters of broadcasting stations in the east routinely begin with a “W”, but the BKB stood for Balaban & Katz Broadcasting.
The principals of the firm of Morgan, Walls, & Morgan were Octavius Morgan (1850-1922), his son Octavius Morgan Jr. (1886-1951) and John A. Walls (1858-1922). Octavius Morgan Sr. was the firm’s lead architect and one of the most prolific architects of his era in Los Angeles. Prior to 1910, when Octavius Jr. was made a partner, the firm had been called Morgan & Walls. Both the elder Morgan and John Walls had earlier been in partnership with the aging Ezra F. Kysor, architect of the Pico House and of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, so the company had fairly deep roots in Los Angeles.
As far as I know, Julia Morgan was not related to Octavius Morgan, personally or professionally. Her office was in San Francisco, and the Hearst’s Examiner Building was her first commission in the southern part of the state, as well as her first project for Hearst. On that project she was associated with the Los Angeles firm of Haenke & Dodd. Her office had sole responsibility for designing Hearst’s castle at San Simeon, which project continued from the 1920s through the 1930s.
LM: The Silent Era source is mistaken. They have conflated the actual Tally’s New Broadway (this theatre, later called the Garnett) at 554 S. Broadway with Tally’s Broadway Theatre at 833 S. Broadway. That was the one demolished in 1929 to make way for the expansion of the May Company southward from its original 8th and Broadway building.
The Garnett has also been demolished, of course, but I’m not sure in what year. It was replaced by the Silverwood’s store, which was there by 1913 (at least if the L.A. Library is right about the date of this photo from their collection.) I believe ScottS is probably correct about the 1893 construction date of the Elden Hotel. The building complex along Mercantile Place which adjoined the hotel property on the north (and was eventually replaced by the Arcade Building) dated from about that same time.
The Clune’s Theatre at 5th and Main shows up in the California Index at the L.A. Library website, too. It’s a card referencing a Times ad of May 15, 1909, announcing the opening of the theatre that day.
The Band Box is listed here as Shamrock Theatre.
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.
An aerial view of this theatre from Terraserver shows a building about 120' deep with frontage of about 180' on Western Avenue. Except for the entrance foyer, the frontage looks as though it was occupied by retail shops to a depth of about 50'. The theatre auditorium looks to have been about 70' wide, and was probably about 120'-130' from screen to back wall. I’d have guessed at over 1000 seats for a place that size.
The style looks art moderne, and the building details suggest an early post-WWII construction date rather than a remodeling of something older. My grandparents lived a little more than a dozen blocks from this theatre in the 1950s, but unfortunately when we went to visit them we almost never drove down Western Avenue, and I don’t recall it. There was still quite a bit of new construction going on in the area about that time, though.
That building at far left could be a corner of the California Club, unless it’s the very back of the old Masonic Temple (fronting on Hill Street a few doors north of the College Theatre) which was demolished to make way for the temporary Hill Street Station that operated during the construction of the Subway Terminal building.
The Hill Street Station depicted in that photo was on or adjacent to the Subway Terminal building’s site, just above the middle of the block between 4th and 5th. There had been an interurban depot on that site since 1908. The depot was moved into the Subway Terminal in 1926.
That is the Biltmore beyond the auditorium. That dates the photo at no earlier than 1922. The passenger shed in the picture was demolished in 1924, replaced by a temporary structure farther south, to make way for construction of the Subway Terminal.
It turns out that the USC archive has a larger scan of the same photo.
Read more about the Hill Street Station on this page at the ERHA website.
Sorry, that was entirely the wrong link I just posted (though an interesting picture- unfortunately having nothing to do with theatres.)
The Auditorium picture is right here.
Here’s and interesting perspective on this theatre: a photo from about 1922 of the Pacific Electric’s Hill Street Station, and looming behind it are the back and side walls of the Auditorium.
So far, no photos of the Town during its first decade when it was Bard’s Hill Street Theatre have surfaced, but here is a photo from the 1910s showing the east side of Hill Street south of 4th Street. The building which A.C. Martin remodeled for Bard’s Theatre is easy to spot, being the sole one-story structure on the near block, and having a full-width awning.
This picture recently added to the L.A. Library’s on-line photo collection shows Hill Street south of 6th in what is probably the late 1920s. (The library’s information page about the photo misidentifies it as Spring Street ca1920.) At the very left can be seen part of the theatre’s marquee. Another, smaller marquee farther along the same building probably marks the entrance to the dance hall on the second floor.
My source for the September, 1963 closure, April, 1964 fire, and July, 1965 demolition of the charred ruins is an article in the Crenshaw area paper, the News-Advertiser, of July 18, 1965. Pick up a pdf scan of it from the L.A. Library. There’s a barely legible picture of a wall about to get whacked with a big ball.
The Times was right. The Mesa was at Crenshaw and Slauson in the Angeles Mesa district of Los Angeles. Crenshaw and Manchester is in Inglewood. I think the address of 8507 must be wrong. Slauson would be 58th Street if it were numbered, so maybe the first two numbers of the address got transposed when this page was set up?
In the first comment on the page vodvilnut gives a date of 1915 for the construction of this theatre, but the PSTOS page Lost Memory linked to last January gives a construction date of 1911. Both dates also appear at various other sites on the Internet. Can anybody confirm one date or the other? I know that B. Marcus Priteca designed his first Pantages Theatre (in San Francisco) in 1911. Could he have designed and gotten the Seattle house built as well in that same year?
Randall: The Seattle Pantages is here under the name Rex Theatre.
Bway: If you’re still watching this page, the photos RobertR linked to back in 2005 depict the theatre on Vine Street north of Hollywood Boulevard which has been variously known as the Hollywood Playhouse, El Capitan Theater, Hollywood Palace, and the Avalon Hollywood, among other names. Built in 1926, it’s been a playhouse, a television studio (during which time it was the location where Richard Nixon made his famous “Checkers” speech), and a night club, but never a movie theatre. If somebody would lease it for a few months for showing films then we’d be able to give it a page here.