Starland Theatre

Joe Vogel on December 5, 2004 at 4:18 am

Los Angeles is the correct location for this theater. No part of North Broadway is in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. It runs from downtown, past Chinatown, skirts the eastern edge of Elysian Park, crosses the Los Angeles river, bends eastward and runs through the Lincoln Heights district of the city, ending at Mission Road, a few blocks south of that street’s intersection with Soto Street. If it actually ran northward, it would reach Highland Park, but it becomes and east-west street and heads instead toward the El Sereno district.

kencmcintyre on July 13, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Advertised as the New Starland in the LA Times on 1/22/36.

Joe Vogel on January 28, 2009 at 8:24 pm

I’ve checked the Assessor’s office web site, and the building on this parcel (extending all the way to the corner of Workman Street) was indeed built in 1912, the year the Starland opened. Apparently the Linclon Heights Bulletin-News was premature in its announcement of the theater’s demolition. It’s been converted to retail use.

Looking at the Google Maps satellite and street views shows that the section of the building with the former theater entrance (now the clothing store Ken mentions) was pretty narrow, and the configuration of the rooftops suggests that this was an “L” shaped theater, with the auditorium extending eastward from a north-south lobby. I never went to the Starland, but the entrance portion looks to be no more than 25 feet wide, if that, and there’s no way they could have crammed an 850 seat theater into that space.

The remodeling of the Starland to the modern style must have been mostly cosmetic, as the Assessor’s office doesn’t give an “effectively built” date for the building. There’s some nice terrazzo pavement on the sidewalk out front, though (see Google street view), in a geometric style which suggests a 1940’s remodeling.

PatrickBlohm on May 28, 2013 at 11:51 pm

Spent the better part of my youth in the Starland, 1955-57. Tickets were $0.09. I just finished watching “The Maze.” I think I have just about relived most of those days now.

Joe Vogel on March 26, 2014 at 7:53 pm

An announcement about plans to build this theater were published int he November 9, 1912, issue of Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer:

“BRICK THEATER AND STORES—F. L. Spaulding, 1460 Dana St., has been awarded the contract at $23,930 for the erection complete of a 1-story brick store and theater building at North Broadway and Workman Sts. for the Huntington Land & Improvement Co., Pacific Electric Bldg. Plans by G. B. Campbell, 744 Pacific Electric Bldg. The building will contain a theater seating about 800, leased to the Globe Amusement Co., and five store rooms. Dimensions 110x165 ft. Concrete foundation, cream pressed brick facing, composition roof, steel beams and columns, cement floors. plate and prism glass windows, galvanized iron skylights, wired glass, metal lath ceiling, stucco front on theater, galvanized iron dome, marble and tile lobby, plumbing, electric wiring.”

I have checked the back of the building at Broadway and Workman in Google Street View, and I now suspect that the auditorium has indeed been demolished and replaced by a parking lot. The existing structure is not 110x165 feet. Also, the rear of the part of the building that the theater entrance was in has a large recess that has been walled up, and that was probably once the entrance to the theater’s auditorium.