A Lasting Reminder of the Glory Days of Cinema in Westchester

Films aren’t just moving pictures gliding across a screen. They are explosions of light and sound that transform a dark box into a kaleidoscopic tour of an imaginary world. What better way to contain and express that energy than with an explosion, and that is exactly what the Loyola Theater once did.

Its facade burst out from a rather drab commercial strip in Westchester to fling out waves of stucco and whiplashed curls. This was no mere building front. It was a plastic celebration of movies.

When it was constructed in 1946, the Loyola Theater was by no means the largest or the most elaborate movie theater Los Angeles had to offer. The grand palaces of Hollywood Boulevard and Broadway were much richer in their decoration and seated thousands. Few, however, had as singular a design as this little neighborhood theater.

Designed by Clarence J. Smale, the Loyola is essentially one image pasted on the front of a bow-trussed, rectangular volume. That image starts from the middle of the marquee and moves out to all the edges of the front in a series of fluid motions. The roof curves back and out, the sides recede in layers, and the roof rises into a slightly curved tower.

The marquee itself, as well as two side pavilions, either hold this curving force back or are being swept away by its force. Horizontal ledges emphasize the movement, and floriated decorations repeat it on a smaller scale. Even the pavement in front gets into the act with stylized white and red flowers dancing across waves of blue and yellow.

The ticket booth provides a miniature of the whole flowering, budding expansion in the form of more curlicues that glide between waves and flowers before cresting over the top and sides of this little metallic shack.

If you look beyond the movement of these lines, you might see some mixed metaphors. There is something about water imagery, something about a jungle of orchids and birds of paradise, something even of Egypt in the form of the parapet and tower, which together resemble Nefertiti’s hat. This is obviously a place for showing Esther Williams extravaganzas, or perhaps for seeing Cleopatra.

Such flowing imagery was popular during the 1940s, when movie sets and theaters dissolved the rigid forms of reality into a more pliable, streamlined vision of a sensuous deformation of the world we experienced every day. What holds the diverse references and almost drunken lines together is the sheer force of the composition. The architect gives you the sense that the immense energy inside the building will engulf and drown you in fantasy.

These days, the waves have frozen, leaving the Loyola as nothing but a faded image of that explosive power. Economic reality has won out over the dissolve and the quick fade. The stucco is now an almost invisible expanse of off-white, the ornamental lines are a dark red, and even the swan that once topped the tower is gone. This is now the Loyola Professional Building, a warren of depressing offices lost in a not very vibrant few blocks of stores and office buildings.

This is therefore another story of the faded glory of the Westside. Yet it would take very little to bring this fantasy back to life and to let us go sailing back into a fantasy. We could be drawn on the waves of architecture into another world. The jets gliding in and out of LAX only a few blocks away remind us of more modern escapes, but the crashing surf of the not-too-distant ocean also sings its siren song, and the Loyola Theater still echoes both their seductions.