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Overview

Designed by architect Simeon Charles Lee, who would go on to become a leading specialist in movie palace design, the Tower Theatre stood on the southeast corner of Broadway and 8th Street, part of Los Angeles's bustling central business district.

Building History

Seating 906 people, the Tower Theatre opened 10/12/1927, an early work in the career of S. Charles Lee (1899-1990), a noted architect of movie theatres. Herman Louis Gumbiner (1879-1952), head of Gumbiner Theatrical Enterprises, owned the Tower and the later Los Angeles Theatre (1931) in Downtown Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Theatre possessed an early air-conditioning system produced by the Carrier Engineering Corporation that made use of the company's revolutionary centrifugal chiller and new overhead ventilation system, an early version of which was installed in Grauman's Metropolitan Theatre in 1923. Air-conditioning systems were first installed in movie theatres by the 1910s, but these early systems had technical problems and did not adequately control high dew points. The New Empire Theater in Montgomery, AL, and Balaban and Katz's Central Park Theatre in Chicago, IL, opened in 1917, and each had a different system for cooling the interior, but the Chicago theatre got more exposure and attention as it was in a larger city and its success spurred the rapid growth of the Balaban and Katz movie empire. The Central Park employed a system built by the Kroeschell Brothers Ice Machine Company of Chicago, a hotbed of research on air-conditioning technology, but this sytem used floor vents to release cold air that proved to be annoying to women in skirts and created cold and moist conditions on moviegoer's legs. Roger Chang in an article for the ASHRAE Journal said of the Central Park user experience: "The Central Park Theater was able to maintain 78°F (26°C) space temperatures, but there were still comfort complaints, due to use of floor-level distribution and “clammy” conditions."

During the 1920s, the Carrier Engineering Corporation of New York rapidly advanced the reliability and comfort of air coditioning systems. Willis H. Carrier (1876-1950) got his start at the important fan engineering company, Buffalo Forge, in Buffalo, NY, but split from that company by 1914. With several investors, he founded the Carrier Engineering Corporation in 1915. Carrier closely studied all air-conditioning systems marketed during the 1910s, noting their advantages and weaknesses. He examined the Kroeschell Brothers system used at the Central Park Theatre, focused on solving its annoying draft and humidity problems. Carrier and his engineers introduced the centrifugal compressor by 1922, a model of which was employed at the Metropolitan Theatre a year later. The centrifugal compressor used a new compound, brand-named "dielene" (1,2-dichloroethene, R-1130), as a refrigerant. The Carrier system, using overhead dispersion of cool air instead of floor vents, produced improved temperature stablility and comfort versus the Kroeschell Brothers system and contributed to the rapid growth of Carrier's air-conditioning business during the 1920s and 1930s.

Clearly, air conditioning was still something of a novelty in Southern CA at the time.

By 1927, and its application at the Tower Theatre, air conditioning was still relatively novel, and its introduction coincided with the application of new sound technologies, such as Western Electric's-Warner Brother's Vitaphone sound system. These two inventions coming out at about the same time, revolutionized the moviegoer's experience.

The Tower Theatre also was fitted with the contemporary Movietone system developed by the Case Research Lab in Auburn, NY, and purchased by the Fox Film Corporation in 1926. Movietone printed the sound recording on the film stock itself, in contrast to the Vitaphone method that required a separate sound phonograph to be played synchronously with the images on film.

R.E. Campbell served as the original building contractor for the Tower; his contract stipulated that he finish the building within a six-month time-span. The Dutch-born, Southern California artist, Anthony (Antoon) B. Heinsbergen, executed murals for the interior of the Tower Theatre, Los Angeles, CA.

The Tower showed its last movie in 1988. The venue was used periodically between 1988 and 2018 as a set for motion pictures.

Between 2018 and 2021, Apple Incorporated purchased the building and renovated it to become its 33rd retail outlet in Los Angeles. The store opened on 06/24/2021.

Building Notes

Erected on the site of the demolished Garrick Theatre, the Tower Theatre was known as the Music Hall in the mid-1940s and the Newsreel in the 1950s, up until 10/1965. As the name suggested, the Newsreel Theatre showed newsreels.

Alteration

A Vitaphone sound system was installed in 1927.

The top of portion of the 100-foot, terra cotta tower (just above the clock) was removed due to structural problems, following the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake; the marquee also has been replaced several times as the theatre's name has changed.

Mrs. Villis G. Randall, daughter of the original owner, H.L. Gumbiner, oversaw a renovation of the Tower Theatre that occurred in 1965; it re-opened as the Tower theatre 10/1965, with improvements to the air-conditioning system, the addition of a coffee lounge, new drapes, carpetting, and exterior.

Floor-level seating was removed after 1988, although some balcony seats have remained.

PCAD id: 937