Old Theater’s Latest Drama
Take a peek inside Old Pasadena’s historic Raymond Theatre.
Amid the crumbling Georgian-style splendor of its gilded molding and ornate ceiling, you’ll notice a vast stage curtain stuck at half-mast. Its cover image of a vintage motorcar seems to float between the stage floor and the rafters.
Is the curtain half up or half down? Only time will tell.
The same is true for the fate of the theater, built in 1921 and constantly recast as a showcase for live theater, vaudeville, Hollywood movies and porno as well as such rock music acts as Motley Crue and Bruce Springsteen. For most of the last decade, it has sat dark. The theater’s owners, Gene and Marilyn Buchanan, want to turn the interior of the Old Pasadena landmark into a $10-million apartment, retail and office complex.
The Buchanans’ project is the biggest drama playing in Pasadena these days for preservationists and theater lovers.
“This proposal would destroy an important historic building,” said Sue Mossman, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, an influential preservation group that wants the Raymond to be restored as a theater.
“It’s buildings like this that create historic districts like Old Pasadena,” she said. “It has some cosmetic damage. But it has held up pretty well over the years.”
The Buchanans’ plan calls for the 1,800-seat theater’s marquee to be removed to reveal the original 1921 Beaux Arts facade. Sixty-one luxury condominiums would be built on the site of a parking lot next door and in the 90-foot-high structure that houses the stage and backstage areas.
On the main floor, the theater’s gold-and-red interior is slated to become retail space. Its massive balcony would be converted to four floors of offices.
Gene Buchanan, who has owned the theater for 15 years, said he will allow a few months for potential buyers to take everything but the old stage area he needs for apartments. The remaining space still could be used as a theater, he said, but he does not does not expect any offers.
“Buildings have many lives,” said Buchanan, who has adapted numerous Old Pasadena buildings to new uses and is among the area’s largest landowners. “I’ve turned the old YMCA basketball court into offices. Taken an old mortuary and turned it into first-class restaurant space. I can’t keep this as a theater because it doesn’t pay,” he said.
“If Old Pasadena depended on keeping all the buildings the way they were, Old Pasadena would be dead by now. “
For most of the last decade, the theater at Raymond Avenue and Holly Street has been more mausoleum than theater. Many of seats have been removed for use elsewhere. Its ornate plaster is crumbling and paint has run down some walls. The main floor is rented out to a local retailer who stores massive boxes of garden furniture there.
While giving a tour this week, Buchanan said rain collects in the sub-basement. In 1985, as the water was pumped out, the remains of a vagrant who apparently had drowned there several months before were found, Buchanan and police recall.
Buchanan’s critics, however, say the theater could have better days ahead.
“It’s still an absolutely magnificent theater,” said Gina Zamparelli, who heads the 1,000-strong Friends of the Raymond Theatre, a group formed during the 1980s, when initial plans to turn the theater into an office building were floated.
“It is going to be 80 years old April 5. It’s gone from vaudeville to movies to punk rock concerts,” she said. “There is no reason this theater cannot be a theater again.”
In April 1921, the doors of Jensen’s Raymond Theatre swung open to much applause. Henry Jensen and his partners lavished $500,000 on sumptuous fittings and ornate construction.
Designed By J. Cyril Bennett, who called it a “monument to the city,” it combined a Beaux Arts-style exterior with a Georgian interior.
Newspapers of the day hailed it as a “home of the Thespian Art” and the “finest and best money can buy,” with its Wurlitzer-Hope-Jones organ considered the best in the West and its light dimmer control panel the largest in the world.
Actors shared the stage in the early years with silent movies. In 1930 admission for the play “Wise Girls” with Elliott Nugent was 35 cents.
Five years later, the actors gave way to the “talkies” and groups such as Howell and Aretha’s 25 Piece Accordion Band. By World War II, the vaudeville theater was decidedly dated and the Raymond’s doors closed.
After being sold for $135,000 on Feb. 13, 1948, it was reborn to show movies as the Crown Theater, with a new marquee and fittings. It reigned as the Crown until April 1974, when the doors closed over a legal brouhaha that stemmed from its showcasing of adult films such as “Deep Throat.”
As rock ‘n’ roll turned toward punk and metal, Pasadena resident Marc Perkins purchased the Raymond in 1979 and renamed it the Crown Perkins Palace. With acoustics that could make David Lee Roth sound like Pavarotti, it hosted such acts as Blondie, Fleetwood Mac and Van Halen.
Axl Rose and Bob Newhart’s autographs adorn a backstage staircase wall. Buchanan recalls that former Van Halen vocalist Roth, a Pasadena native, liked to rehearse there and once installed metal pegs 50 or 60 feet up on the backstage side wall so he could practice his hobby, climbing.
The Buchanans became partners of Perkins in the mid-1980s and announced plans for an office complex on the site. That proposal ignited a political furor.
Amid the fireworks, the Raymond was sold to music impresario Gary Folgner, who spent $400,000 restoring the venue and started holding shows there. Buchanan and Perkins carried a mortgage for Folgner, who wound up in arrears and handed back the theater after a year. Folgner blamed his mounting debt on a Pasadena Fire Department decision to close the theater in 1990, amid a dispute over whether the seats were fire-retardant.
So far, the latest proposal’s opponents have rebuffed the Buchanans’ efforts to get required city approval. A city zoning hearing officer denied permission for the project, as did the Board of Zoning Appeals last month.
“I’m not ready to throw out this cultural resource we have and say there’s no way this theater could be economically viable in this city,” said Kathleen Torres, a zoning appeals board member.
The issue is expected to be decided by the Pasadena City Council in the next few months. The city must certify an environmental impact report on the project because the Raymond is deemed a historic landmark as a part of Old Pasadena’s nationally recognized historic district.
The city has estimated it would cost as much as $9.4 million to buy and restore the theater. A city environmental report on the Raymond found that keeping it as a theater was not a viable alternative to the Buchanans’ project.
However, Zamparelli, a concert promoter, said other restored theaters such as Hollywood’s Pantages and Egyptian, where the Raymond’s grand organ now sits, show what can be done. The Egyptian is now home to the American Cinematheque and the Pantages is a premier venue for live shows, now staging “The Lion King.”
The biggest obstacle to reviving the Raymond is not money but the Buchanans, Zamparelli said. “The theater is closed for one reason only: The owners have no interest in a theater operation and they never have from the day they bought it.”
