Monday, March 10, 2008 – The NoHo Scene

You know London's lively Soho – the one square mile bounded by Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, Shaftesbury Avenue to the south and Charing Cross Road to the east – visit Blackmarket Records and Vinyl Junkies and all that.  And you know of New York's arty and oddly trendy Soho – in that case the area south of Houston Street (thus the name). Every city needs an arts and theater district.  Out here in the San Fernando Valley, North Hollywood has its arts and theater district, where Magnolia crosses Lankershim Boulevard – the NoHo Arts District.

Let's start with the El Portal Theater, 5269 Lankershim Boulevard, 1926, by Lewis A. Smith, the man who designed The Vista.  It was originally built as a vaudeville house and sits directly across the street from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

See Cinema Treasures –

This theatre is one of some 200 that could be described as "Skouras-ized For Showmanship" which is the title of the ANNUAL of 1987 of the Theatre Historical Soc. of America. In the late 1930s through the 1950s, there occurred on the west coast of the United States a phenomenon known as the 'Skouras style' in recognition of the oversight of the Skouras brothers in their management of several cinema chains. They employed a designer by the name of Carl G. Moeller to render their cinemas/theatres in a new style best described as 'Art Moderne meets Streamlined.' The then new availability of aluminum sheeting at low cost was the principal material difference to this style allowing for sweeping, 3-dimensional shapes of scrolls to adorn walls and facades in an expression that would have been much more expensive and not at all the same in plaster. With the use of hand tinted and etched aluminum forms, the designers could make ornaments in mass production that allowed much greater economies of scale.

So now you know.

How about some Celtic Jazz?

This is a place for actors –

Hungry?

This is the sushi bar on Lankershim –

One of the better murals in the area –

If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back this site.

Technical Note:

Photographs after March 3, 2008, were taken with a Nikon D200 – or a Nikon D70 when noted. All previous photographs were taken with the D70. The lenses used are (1) AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or (2) AF Nikkor 70-300 mm telephoto, or (3) AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 55-200 mm f/4-5.6G ED. Photography here is modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0.  The earliest photography in the archives was done with a Sony Mavica digital still camera (MVC-FD-88) with built-in digital zoom.

All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik