Clune's Auditorium, Los Angeles

Nearly 100 years ago, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation opened to great fanfare at William "Billy" Clune's Auditorium on the north/east corner of 5th and Olive Street in downtown Los Angeles - across from Pershing Square. Pictured above, the auditorium boasted 2,500 seats. Before it's reign as a premier movie house in the teens and twenties, the building had served pious Angelenos as a church. In the 1930s, it became home to the LA Philharmonic and LA Symphony. When planned renovations fell through the in 1980s, the structure was demolished to make way for an office building, which, by the way, also failed. Today the corner is a parking lot.

With compliments,

Keith