Hippodrome Theater
314 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
314 S. Main Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90013
7 people
favorited this theater
Showing 176 - 180 of 180 comments
The LA Library online database has a series of pictures of this theater and the adjoining buildings. The first picture from the 1920’s shows the Adolphus and the Westminster Hotel on the corner of 4th and Main. The next picture is from 1950. The theater is now a parking garage with the Main Street Gym upstairs. The last picture appears to be from the late 1960s or early 1970s and shows the theater/parking structure standing alone, in disrepair. I imagine it was demolished shortly after.
If you look at the 1950 picture and note the location of the fire hydrant, you can stand by the same hydrant today and see by the cutout in the sidewalk where the entrance to the garage was. I know this is a little overboard, but by the time I moved to LA in 1984, all of the interesting buildings were already torn down.
I just stumbled across this listing. I worked at 425 S. Main for years (yes, RTD) and I vaguely remember the Main Street Gym being just down the block for the first year I was there — the building had caught my notice because the architecture was somewhat distinctive compared to the stuff remaining around it. It was soon gone, though and we often parked our cars on the site.
I had no idea there had once been a theater there.
Originally opened as the Adolphus Theater on 27th November 1911. It was essentially a vaudeville theater but did screen a first run motion picture after the interval as the 2nd part of the show. It was fitted with a Moller 3Manual/14Rank theater pipe organ which accompanied the motion picture.
It was re-named Hippodrome Theater from 31st August 1913 and continued until closing in the late 1940’s. The reinforced concrete constructed auditorium was demolished in the late 1940’s and became a car parking lot, but the frontage and the 60feet long outer lobby were retained. This became used as the Main St Gymnasium on the 2nd floor for many year, until even this part of the theater was finally demolished.
I went by the site a couple of years ago and it was still a vacant lot.
The Los Angeles Daily Journal of August 15, 1907, announced that Adolf Ramish would demolish the Panorama Building at 320 South Main Street and construct a theater to be called the Adolphus on the site.
The auditorium itself must have been demolished before 1961, as a Los Angeles Times article on August 13th of that year was headlined “Site of Hippodrome Sold.”
Whenever the auditorium was razed, I know that the building containing its entrance remained for many years. In the mid 1960s, the area once occupied by the auditorium was used as a car park, and the old lobby was the driveway through which it was entered. I don’t know when that building was demolished, but the last time I remember seeing it was about 1965. I know that it was gone by 1982.
The Hippodrome Theatre was located at 320 S. Main Street.