Downtown L.A. has one of the most impressive collections of historic movie theaters in the world. Broadway Street offered Angelenos a heady mix of vaudeville and cinema in beautiful theater houses and stately department stores. The Beaux-Arts style was firmly in place when most of the Broadway theaters were built, in 1910 to 1931, and therefore many exteriors and interiors favor classic (Greek, Roman, Italian Renaissance) designs. By the late 1920s, the Art Deco style had come into favor for office buildings, though theatergoers still loved the ornate, eye-popping styles as featured in The Theatre at Ace Hotel, the Tower, and particularly the Los Angeles.

Beginning in the 1920s, automobiles contributed to the decline of the extensive trolly system that connected Downtown Los Angeles to the rest of the urban area. As a result, ridership ceased to grow and with it fare revenue. An obsession with cars and the consequent rise of auto-centric planning along with “white flight” did more damage. Theaters began moving to Hollywood – Grauman’s had already opened the Egyptian Theatre in 1922 and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre opened in 1927 – and department stores opened branches in outlying areas. There’s no clear date that can be stamped on Broadway as its year of demise because the change was gradual. But by the 1950s, with the explosive post-war growth in the suburbs, the completion of new shopping centers, and the growth of the freeway system, the end had come.

Most of the majestic buildings still stand. They remain as icons of an earlier age.