Round Up Theatre
5421 S. Vermont Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90037
5421 S. Vermont Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90037
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Additional Info
Functions: Storage
Previous Names: Colonial Theatre, Rio Theatre, Capitol Theatre, Colonial Theatre, Rio Theatre
Nearby Theaters
Opened as the Colonial Theatre by 1936. By 1938 it had been renamed Rio Theatre and on March 7, 1940 it was operating as the Capitol Theatre. It was renamed Round Up Theatre on June 30, 1946.
Contributed by
William Gabel
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Recent comments (view all 12 comments)
Listed as the Capitol in the 1942 city directory.
Listed as the Rio in the 1938 directory, so it’s Rio, Capitol and then the Round Up, I believe.
Here is the 1938 city directory. The Rio is listed at 5421 S. Vermont.
http://tinyurl.com/39kgmx
http://tinyurl.com/35qpj8
If anyone has access to the city tax records, I would be curious to know when the current building in the 5400 block of Vermont was built. I haven’t found any record of when the Round Up closed or was demolished in the LA Times archives. Thanks.
Not demolished. The Round Up’s building still stands. The L.A. County assessor’s office lists buildings at 5419 and 5425 S. Vermont. From the street they look like one building, but they are separate structures remodeled with a common facade.
The theater was in the northerly building, now using the address 5419 (probably originally the address of a store front, with another store front at 5423, and the theater’s entrance would have been between them.) It’s a 5400 square foot building erected in 1920, very likely as a theater. If you use Google Street view and look up the alley at it from 55th Street, you can see that it still has the paired rear exits characteristic of theater buildings.
Interestingly enough, the 1929 City Directory has the address listed in the Motion Picture Theatres section, but doesn’t give a theater name. Instead, it gives the personal name “Fisher W.D.” for that address. I don’t have access to city directories from earlier in the 1920s, so can’t check to see if the address was listed with a theater name then. However, it is listed in the 1936 directory as the Colonial Theatre, so there’s another aka.
Thanks, Joe. I will stop by and take some pictures.
What is this building currently used as?
The current occupant of the former theater building, and apparently the building next door to the south as well, is an outfit called Medical Purchasing Corporation. It might be a buyer’s co-op of some sort. They use the address 5419 S. Vermont. In Google Street View I don’t see any signage on the building at all. They probably use the space mostly for warehousing.
Google has chosen to break Street View for this location, skipping the entire 5400 block of Vermont Avenue. While Google chooses to let Street View remain broken, there is a bird’s-eye view available at Bing Maps.
Grand opening ad posted. It opened as Capitol on March 7th, 1940.