The Tower Theatre, at South Broadway and West Eighth Street, was commissioned by H.L. Gumbiner.[4] He would also build the Los Angeles Theatre in 1931.
The Tower was the first theater designed by architect S. Charles Lee.[3] Seating 900 on a tiny site (50 feet wide by 153 feet long[5]), replacing the 650-seat 1911 Garrick Theatre,[6] it was designed in powerful Baroque Revival style with innovative French, Spanish, Moorish, and Italian elements all executed in terra-cotta.[3] Its interior was modeled after the Paris Opera House.[4] Its exterior features a prominent clock tower, the very top of which was removed after an earthquake.[7]
The theater opened in 1927 with the silent film The Gingham Girl starring Lois Wilson and George K. Arthur.[9] For a while during the early 1950s, the name was changed to the Newsreel Theater.[10] It closed as a theatre in 1988.[11]
Use as a filming location
The Tower Theatre's exterior and/or interior can be seen in the following films and TV series:
The Tower Theatre has been declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, HCM #450, by the Office of Historic Resources, Department of City Planning, City of Los Angeles.[13]
Current use
As with many other historic theaters in Downtown Los Angeles, though largely intact, the theater was abandoned for many years because of migration of cinema attendance to Hollywood Boulevard and other Los Angeles locations. Over the years, its lobby has been leased to various vendors, and the auditorium has been used by the Living Faith Evangelical Church.[3]
In November 2015, the website DTLA Rising reported that Apple was interested in leasing the Tower for a retail store.[14] Six months later, The Los Angeles Business Journal reported that Apple was "in the process of securing a lease".[15] On August 2, 2018, The Los Angeles Times reported that Apple was submitting plans for the renovation of the building. The company also released an artist's rendering of the converted space.[16] The refurbished space opened on June 24, 2021 as an Apple Store, with the store serving as a flagship Apple Store for Los Angeles.[17][18][19]
^ abcdefgLord, Rosemary (2002). Los Angeles: Then and Now. San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN1-57145-794-1.
^ abcdKaplan, Sam Hall (1989), L.A. Follies: A Critical Look at Growth Politics & Architecture, Santa Monica, CA: Cityscape Press, p. 199, ISBN0-9622007-0-0
^"ZIMAS". zimas.lacity.org. Retrieved July 30, 2017.
