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Building History

Movie exhibitor and impresario Sid Grauman (1879-1950) first owned theatres in San Jose, CA (Grauman's Unique Theatre, 1903), and San Francisco, CA, (Grauman's Imperial, 1912) before relocating to Southern CA. He located his first theatre in Los Angeles, CA, the Million Dollar (1918), in the established Broadway District in Downtown; by the early 1920s, however, he and other developers were looking away from the city center to find cheaper land in up-and-coming, urbanizing neighborhoods to build new movie palaces. On 07/04/1920, theLos Angeles Times reported: "Sid Grauman is also erecting a theater on Hollywood Boulevard and McCollum Street. According to the Grauman interests, approximately $500,000 will be spent in the construction of this building, which will be an L shaped structure with entrances from both streets. It will have a seating capacity of about 2000 people. Plans for the building are now being prepared by Meyer and Holler (Milwaukee Building Company)." (p. 2, part V)

In the 1920s, Hollywood began to become a fashionable section of Los Angeles in which to house movie premieres, and Sid Grauman's Egyptian became a leading location for them; with the building of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1926-1927, theatre-building in Hollywood began to drain patrons from Broadway.

By late 1927, the new United Artists Theater Circuit, Incorporated, formed in 1926, owned Grauman's Egyptian. The Los Angeles Times reported: ""Besides the new house under construction in Los Angeles [the United Artists Theatre seating 2,200], United Artists owns outright Grauman's Egyptian in Hollywood, which is leased to West Coast for a fixedrental and one-half of the profits; and a two-thirds interest in the Chinese Theater." (See Earle E. Grove, "Theater Chain Does Well," Los Angeles Times, 11/29/1927, p. 14.)

Building Notes

Grauman's Egyptian Theatre was named L.A. Historic Cultural Monument #584, declared 09/21/1993; theatre historian David Naylor, in his American Picture Palaces The Architecture of Fantasy, (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981, p. 216), noted that Grauman's Eqyptian Theatre had 1,800 seats.

Alteration

Hodgetts + Fung Design Associates and Historic Resources Group, both of Los Angeles, CA, supervised a large-scale, $13 million renovation of the Egyptian in 1998. Grauman's Egyptian was badly damaged by the 1994 Northridge Earthquake;