OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Google Streetview (new tab)

Building History

Marcus Loew obtained a 99-year lease on the property from Arthur Letts for $12,500,000, the largest rental price obtained in Los Angeles in 1920. Loew built a 12-story, Class-A, office building and theatre on the site, costing an additional $1,600,000. The Loew's Theatre held its first program, a combined vaudeville show and film, on 11/12/1921. (See LA Conservancy.org, “State Theatre and Building,” accessed 11/21/2020.) The film was director Maxwell Karger's "A Trip to Paradise" (1921), starring Bert Lytell and Virginia Valli.

On 10/22/1998, the Metropolitan Theatres chain ended exhibition of motion pictures at Loew's State Theatre.United Building Associates, owners of Loew's State Theatre in 1998, agreed to a lease lasting "several years" with the Universal Church, which would hold services here. (See John Regardie, "State of Darkness," Los Angeles Downtown News, 11/02/1998, p. 1, 7.)

Building Notes

An earlier building located on the southwest corner of 7th Street and Broadway had been vacated but not yet been demolished on 07/04/1920.

David Naylor, in his American Picture Palaces The Architecture of Fantasy, (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981, p. 216), indicated that the Loew's State Theatre in Los Angeles, CA, had 2,450 seats. The State Theatre had two entrances, each with its own marquee, one on Broadway and one on 7th.

Alteration

The marquee on 7th has been removed.

PCAD id: 1648