Teatro los Pinos

From the August 22, 1925 edition of the Los Angeles Times comes this report regarding South Gate and its first movie theater: “A new building is now nearing completion on State Street, which will have a seating capacity for 300. It is expected to open about the first of September with shows nightly.”
This project evidently came to fruition since the 1927 Sanborn map for South Gate shows a movie house located at 8463 State Street in South Gate. Unfortunately, neither of these sources provides a name for this theater. This theater site has been torn down.
The property where the theater once stood is now occupied by the Greenfield Care Center according to Google Maps. The Los Angeles County Tax Assessor records show the Greenfield facility was constructed in 1970 and occupies a total of 8 lots from the 3254 tract. What happened to the theater between its 1925 construction date and 1970 when the Greenfield site was built remains to be discovered.
Could this be the demolished Gem Theater? (Another possibility could be the South Gate 15¢ Theater advertised as an Independent Theater concurrently in the Los Angeles Times with the Gem â€" primarily in the 1940’s.)
There’s only one Ford Dealership that can be found in South Gate on Long Beach Boulevard in the Los Angeles Times Archives: Lindt-Wilson Ford. Lindt-Wilson had 2 recorded addresses on Long Beach Boulevard. The earliest address is 8707 Long Beach Boulevard (now a Tune-Up Masters per Google). A second, later address is 8012 Long Beach Boulevard. (Santa Ana is a cross street for this location.) The Lindt-Wilson move to 8012 had taken place by 1959. (Based on when the L.A. Times Ads started reflecting this as the Lindt-Wilson place of business.) If this was the theater’s location, it could not have been operating there any later than 1959.
(Using Google for a reference once more, this location is a Burger King. The Los Angeles County Tax Assessor Records show the current structure on the property was built in 1999. The County considers the address of the existing structure, i.e., the Burger King, to be 8012 Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park. As far as being a South Gate / Huntington Park address Google is neutral. The point comes up on their map whether a search is done for 8012 Pacific or Long Beach Boulevard â€" North of Santa Ana Street, South of Cudahy Street on the East side of the street.)
Is the 8012 address the former site of the Avon?
The Trianon Ballroom (recently razed) was at 2800 Firestone Boulevard.

I saw an ad for a comedy show at this theater on a local channel the other day. Good to see the theater alive and well, and in use.

Now you’ve been warned twice.

There are at lest two vanished South Gate theatres missing from Cinema Treasures though. There were houses called the Gem and the Avon, which probably existed during the silent era. They may have been knocked down by the 1933 earthquake, as many buildings in that area were.

According to the county assessor, the building at Long Beach and Glenwood was built in 1941, with an effective build date of 1946. I wonder if it could have been the Trianon Ballroom, a popular night spot of the 1940s and the site of several live remote broadcasts of a music show called One Night Stand produced by the Armed Forces Radio Service during WWII?

The building also looks like it could have been a bowling alley. Bowling became a fad in the 1930s-1940s, and L.A. used to be littered with streamline moderne bowling alleys.

Here are the photos of the Teatro:
http://tinyurl.com/3puklt
http://tinyurl.com/544hld
http://tinyurl.com/4z46o8
http://tinyurl.com/4gmqyr
http://tinyurl.com/4olcw3
http://tinyurl.com/4djlw7
http://tinyurl.com/4anrkc
http://tinyurl.com/4cyjuu
http://tinyurl.com/54mpeq
http://tinyurl.com/4fopws
http://tinyurl.com/4hvo6e
http://tinyurl.com/54dlz3
http://tinyurl.com/4t7ou2
http://tinyurl.com/4h9sy5
http://tinyurl.com/5ye5rc

In 1950, the theater was used for church services by the Christian Chapel. It looks like the church bought their own building a few years later.

Advertised as a Spanish language theater in the LA Times on 3/15/81.

I was born and raised in South Gate,Lived on Illinois Street. and went to the beautiful Vogue growing up. Always played two top featues, Didn’t always get the Roy Rogers movies which upset me. Summer wednesday matinee, a great western and 10 cartoons and a serial.Later became a small theatre chain called South-Lynn theatres. Today it has spanish movies with a stage show, i’ve heard. The name Vogue has disappeared completely from the building. It’s sad.

Here are a few more photos from the UCLA collection:
http://tinyurl.com/n4erb