EAST LOS ANGELES : Panel Backs Move to Preserve Theater

The State Historical Resources Commission has agreed to keep the Golden Gate Theater in the National Register of Historic Places, almost ensuring that the theater will be protected from demolition.

The commission will forward its unanimous recommendation, along with the owners’ request to have the historical designation removed, to the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C., who will make a final decision on the designation within two months.

Local preservationists said they hope the National Register agrees with the state commission and puts to rest their fears that the theater, built in 1927, will be lost to the wrecking ball.

“It’s unlikely that the (National Register) would go against the state commission’s unanimous decision,” said Barbara Hoff, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit historic preservation group.

The Angelopoulos family, which has owned the property 20 years, wanted the historical designation removed from the theater to improve the chances of selling the property. Their attorney, Jerold B. Neuman, did not return phone calls last week.

The commission’s decision leaves open the question of what the owners can do with the property.

Last summer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board agreed to look into buying the land at Atlantic and Whittier boulevards for a planned Red Line subway station. The theater would be refurbished as a station, the last of six on the line’s Eastside extension.

The site has been approved for the station, but funding has not been said Carrie Sutkin, planning deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

“There is legislative support for that and the full funding agreement was assigned to (U.S. Transportation) Secretary (Federico) Pena’s office,” Sutkin said. “It is not exactly pinned down yet, but there’s a lot of community support. I would say it’s 51% there.”

The commission’s vote earlier this month helped seal plans to move ahead with the subway station, Sutkin said. Local preservationists had long struggled to keep the theater from being demolished.

The decision came after a visit to the 11,000-square-foot building, whose entrance replicates the portal of the University of Salamanca in Spain. The commission members, Neuman and members of the Los Angeles Conservancy walked through the building last October.

“I think the visit really made the difference,” said Conservancy director Linda Dishman. “They could see that the historical value remained.”

The conservancy considers the long-vacant theater important to the area because it is one of fewer than two dozen buildings in Los Angeles built in the Churrigueresque style. In a report to the commission, the conservancy cited the style of the theater, which it said embodies the “distinctive characteristics of the neighborhood movie palace, a genre which flourished in Southern California for only a few years, between about 1925 and 1932.”

Said Sutkin: “The decision was really good for everyone because it set the record straight that the theater will stay.”