Theater, Market Are Landmarks That Endured

In a city that makes landmarks out of coffee shops, two truly venerable landmarks that opened within a year of each other during World War I still stand, still thrive and still draw applause.

Before the Sunset Strip, there was Broadway. Downtown Los Angeles’ jazziest entertainment district was a bustling thoroughfare aglow with bright lights and lined with glitzy motion picture and vaudeville palaces. And at the top of the street was the Million Dollar Theater--named for its then-exorbitant price tag.

In 1917, showman Sid Grauman commissioned architect Albert C. Martin Sr. to design a theater for the ground floor of what would become the Edison building, a theater worthy of a city that was the film capital of the world. When the Million Dollar Theater opened Feb. 1, 1918, it was hailed as one of the first great motion picture “palaces,” a model for its future sister theaters, the Egyptian and fabled Chinese.

Silent stars Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Charlie Chaplin walked under its ornate Churrigueresque terra cotta arch to attend the opening night premiere, the Mack Sennett comedy “The Silent Man.” The theater’s success was instant and durable.

The silent classic “Ben Hur” showed there every night for six months in 1926 as organist Gaylord Carter played the musical score on the theater’s organ.

The theater was at least as interesting to look at as the movies: Longhorn cattle skulls resplendent with life-size bronze horns nuzzle volutes; bison head corbels support a silent-screen parade of statues representing the fine arts. Ceilings were ornately carved and canvas murals portrayed cherubs.

At exclusive after-hours screenings, Grauman entertained his private guests, among them Chaplin, Gloria Swanson and comedian Harold Lloyd, who had helped Carter land his job as house organist.

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Above the theater, after Edison moved to 5th Street and Grand Avenue 12 years later, several of the building’s dozen floors were leased by the powerful Metropolitan Water District, and in its boardroom legendary city engineer William Mulholland worked with his sometime rivals to bring Colorado River water to the city.

By the lean 1930s, movies were still popular but movie palaces had become more common and less ornate. For more than four decades beginning in 1939, the theater showed Spanish-language movies and offered stage acts. Stars from Latin America--Javier Solis, Cantinflas, Vincente Fernandez and Lola Beltran among others--performed over the years.

The sidewalk in front bears plaques honoring Latino performers, among them Mexican screen idol Jorge Negrete. In 1954, as he prepared for a weeklong engagement at the theater, he died. Hundreds of disbelieving fans showed up at the Million Dollar, hoping to hear that it wasn’t true.

When the MWD moved out in 1963, it almost took the Million Dollar with it, leaving the building virtually empty. One critic described it sadly as “an aging Miz Kitty in her dated dance-hall finery.” (Later, the Brazil-based Iglesia Universal Church would conduct Spanish-language services.) But even as the theater struggled, its next-door neighbor, the Grand Central Market, thrived.

In 1898, Homer Laughlin Sr., a Civil War veteran who made a fortune manufacturing fine dinnerware that carried his name, commissioned architect John Parkinson to build the city’s first reinforced steel and “truly fireproof” building. It housed Coulter Dry Goods Co., and eventually the ground floor was extended out to Hill Street and a seventh and eighth story were added, where the Central Library took up residence for two years.

By 1908, Coulter’s store had moved and the City of Paris department store--intended to compete with the new Broadway, Bullock’s and Hamburger’s People’s Store, later known as May Co.--set up shop.

But an entrepreneur from Seattle had other ideas for the space. Chester A. Goss partnered with Laughlin’s heir to open a huge, ground-floor food hall. So, in 1917, the City of Paris moved out and Grand Central Market opened for business, beginning a run of popularity that not even the movies could rival. A World War II-era record still stands: Its biggest month was in 1944, when 1.3 million people shopped at its stalls.

Grand Central hung on through the building of freeways, the redevelopment of Bunker Hill and the growth of suburban supermarkets. Its international flavor made it a must stop for campaigning politicians, among them Richard Nixon, John and Robert Kennedy, and Pat and Jerry Brown.

The two buildings, market and theater, were purchased in the 1980s by Ira Yellin, a lawyer-turned-developer with a penchant for urban preservation who had them restored with private and public funds as the staging ground for the revival of a downtown residential and shopping district.