Orpheum Theatre
- Architect
- G. Albert Lansburgh
- Year
- 1926
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
- Collection
- broadway’s movie palaces
The Orpheum Theatre at 842 South Broadway opened on February 15, 1926, as the fourth and final Los Angeles home of the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, following three earlier venues that used the same name. Its Beaux Arts facade was designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, a specialist movie theater architect, and a $3 million renovation begun in 1989 made it the most restored of the city's historic movie palaces.
the building
The Mighty Wurlitzer. Installed in 1928, the Orpheum's Wurlitzer theater organ is one of only three pipe organs remaining in Southern California, a survivor of the era when live music accompanied vaudeville acts and silent film.
The vaudeville roster. Performers on the Orpheum stage included burlesque star Sally Rand, the Marx Brothers, Will Rogers, and Judy Garland singing with her family, part of the venue's run as the last and longest-lived of Los Angeles's Orpheum circuit theaters.
the style
Lansburgh gave the Orpheum a Beaux Arts facade, the classical, symmetrical vocabulary he used across his career designing movie theaters.
the architect
G. Albert Lansburgh was a prominent theater architect; the Orpheum's Beaux Arts facade is a signature example of his movie-palace work.
significance
A National Register of Historic Places contributing property, the Orpheum underwent a $3 million restoration starting in 1989 that made it the most fully restored of Los Angeles's historic movie palaces.
nearby
- Eastern Columbia Building
- Charles C. Chapman Building
- Garfield Building
- Maxfield Building
- A.G. Bartlett Building
- Grether & Grether Building