The establishment alternative paper out here, the LA Weekly, lists it as an LA Classic, and it is the classic Hollywood apartment building from the golden age, and none the worse for wear.

It's the El Mirador Apartments at 1302-1310 North Sweetzer Avenue, West Hollywood. The El Mirador was named for its awesome views of the Los Angeles basin - designed by S. Charles Lee in 1929 for the California Builders of Homes. Lee was a theater designer - Glendale's Alex, Inglewood's Academy, Westwood's Bruin - and this is very theatrical. It's seven stories in a mix of Spanish Colonial Revival and Churrigueresque styles - not bad for a guy who was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1922 at the age of twenty-two to open his architectural business out here, and it seems he really got into the Hollywood Glamour thing. He also did the thirties makeover of the Max Factor building in the center of Hollywood.

The El Mirador is an amazing and perhaps rather silly building, but mid-afternoon, Sunday, August 13, the sky was amazingly blue and the lighting right, and the camera was in the car, and there was a parking space open on the street. So here are some details. A full array of shots will be posted this coming Sunday in the weekly Just Above Sunset.

Thursday, August 10, 2006 - 2:10 pm Pacific Time

The Location:

The Silent Movie Theatre
611 North Fairfax Avenue, Hollywood, California 90036 (a half block south of Melrose Avenue)

From Los Angeles City Search this -

The Background

Rumors of blood on the lobby carpet and ghosts in the projection room have titillated Angelenos for years. Silent-film fans John and Dorothy Hampton opened this movie house with Cecile B. DeMille's "The King of Kings" in 1941 just as Nora Desmond's close-up was fading to black. But it was the headline-grabbing murder of their slick-talking protege, Laurence Austin, by a hired gun who sprayed the theater with gunfire in 1997, that cemented the house's place in Hollywood lore.

The Appeal

After rescuing the theater from certain demolition, songwriter Charlie Lustman rehabilitated the interior. Today, the only ghosts lurking are those of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, who frequently headline along with vamp retrospectives and the occasional 3-D night. The theater regularly fills with kids, octogenarians, and all ages between. Drop by for live piano accompaniment, cartoons and shorts - and don't miss the new art deco coffee shop and back garden.

The Silent Movie Theater in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles had been founded by a couple of dreamers after the Second World War. After they had become old and decrepit, Lawrence Austin appeared to help them. He was a felon, having served a term in California prison for embezzlement. He induced the old couple to sign over the property to him; they were dispatched to a nursing home.

The crook seemed, at last, to have found his vocation: he refurbished the old theater, and employed musician/composer Robert Israel and other musicians to provide live musical accompaniment for the many rare and remarkable films which the theater promoted and screened with fanfare and style.

Unfortunately, Lawrence Austin was shot to death during a screening. He had kept a catamite, and had foolishly made the boy his heir. The catamite - eager to get his inheritance - had hired an assassin.

Eventually the gunman was caught. He confessed the plot. Both gunman and catamite were convicted of murder, and are now in prison.

Unfortunately, the Silent Movie Theater's only valuable asset was its collection of rare prints of silent movies. It was sold. The movie house remains, but its program of regular screenings of rare and classic films from the silent era has been discarded.