Tag Archives: BUILDING (San Diego) – Lomo Theatre (1945)

Architecture & Design Photography: S. CHARLES LEE (1899-1990). The Loma Theatre (1944-46), 3150 Rosecrans Boulevard; San Diego, California. (1 Photo).

FEATURE image: The Loma Theatre with its vertical sign in San Diego, California. was opened in 1945. This is a true transitional/hybrid building for American architect S. Charles Lee. The architect retains the curves (in the sign) of his pre-war theatre buildings and moves to the angles (in the main structure) that increasingly marked his movie theatres post war. The Loma Theatre was built in the later part of Lee’s career and is one of the scores of movie theatres built by the architect between 1926 and 1950. It was operated by Mann Theatres from 1973 until it closed on December 17, 1987. In San Diego’s Midway District, the Loma Theatre had a reputation of being a friendly, classy place (see video below). Author’s photograph, October 1999 60%.

The Loma Theatre was designed by S. Charles Lee (1899-1990) and opened on May 5, 1945 with its first feature, 20th Century-Fox’s Technicolor musical film, Diamond Horseshoe, starring Betty Grable. While the year 1936 was the most prolific year for Lee’s building designs – no less than 32 individual structures in California – the years 1945-46 of which the Loma Theatre is a part were prolific with 17 new movie theatres erected in California as well as one each in Arizona (250 seats), Miami, Florida (2000 seats), and Managua, Nicaragua (2000 seats). The Loma Theatre was originally opened with 1,188 seats.

Betty Grable was a 1940’s musical star. The Loma Theatre opened their doors with “Diamond Horseshoe,” a Technicolor Fox musical that was very successful at its release.Betty Grable, 1940s musical star” by Movie-Fan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

S. Charles Lee was one of the foremost mid20th-century architects of movie houses on the West Coast. Simeon Charles Levi was born and grew up in Chicago. There Lee worked for Rapp & Rapp, the renowned Chicago architectural firm that specialized in movie theatre design. Rapp & Rapp’s significant work in this period included State Street’s Chicago Theatre in 1921, and the Bismarck Hotel and Theatre, and the Oriental Theatre both in 1926.

S. Charles Lee was born in Chicago who had a prolific and successful career as a motion picture theatre archtitect and designer, particularly in the large state of California. Lee was a pilot who often flew to job sites for time efficiency. That it also impressed clients was not missed. Fair use.

The Loma Theatre’s architect was influenced by Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). In 1922, before moving to Los Angeles, Lee was impressed by the Chicago Tribune building competition on North Michigan Avenue whose competitors juxtaposed historicism, such as the Beaux-Arts, with modernism. Lee considered himself a modernist, and his design career expressed the Beaux-Arts discipline and a modernist functionalism and freedom of form.

S. Charles Lee who developed his own style for his movie theatres in California was originally inspired by leading Chicago modern architects who he worked for and studied as a young architect.

Beginning his career in California in the 1920’s, by the 1930’s S. Charles Lee was the principal designer of motion picture theaters in Los Angeles. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Lee is credited with designing many hundreds of movie theaters in California, including San Diego’s Loma Theatre at 3150 Rosecrans Boulevard.

Mann Theatres operated it from 1973 to December 1987. Its last feature was Paramount Pictures’ Fatal Attraction, starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. The Loma ’s vintage signage is intact along with some of its movie-house interior although today it serves as a bookstore. For other interesting memories of this friendly and classy movie house, see – http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1716– retrieved December 29, 2022.

Architect S. Charles Lee in the early 1920s. Public Domain.

Street Photography: SIGNS OF THE TIMES. (60 Photos).

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6/1979 Dublin, Ireland 200kb 45%. Opened in 1967, the Berkeley at Trinity College is an example of Brutalist architecture – exposed, unpainted concrete, monochrome palette, steel, timber, glass – that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom as a reaction to nostalgic architecture. 

(3.26 minutes). When I was in Ireland studying history, it was at Trinity College in Dublin. Though there was access to the Berkeley Library (pronounced Barkley) as well as the Old Library that housed the Book of Kells, I ended up using almost exclusively The National Library of Ireland, established in 1877 (though its origins are in the early 18th century), which was a 5-minute walk from the Trinity College campus. Through its decorative iron gates off Kildare Street was Ireland’s “library of record” whose rich collection of books, manuscripts and other documents (over 12 million items) was deeply related to the expanse of Irish history, particularly from its medieval period to before 1800. Taking up a desk day after day in the Main Reading Room designed in 1890 by Irish architect Sir Thomas Deane (1828 –1899) I searched their catalogs and spoke with reference librarians which resulted in requested materials which were then delivered by runners to my assigned desk.

FROM THE (May 9, 2023) ARTICLE: “A fellow of Trinity and the former librarian there, [18th century philosopher George] Berkeley [1685-1753] is regarded by academics as one of the most influential thinkers of the early modern period. Some view his philosophical and scientific ideas on perception and reality as foreshadowing the work of Albert Einstein. But last month, the governing board of Trinity, Ireland’s oldest university, announced that it had voted to “dename” the library after months of research and consultation by a group established to review problematic legacies.”

After months of work in Ireland and back in the U.S., the end result was a 75-page paper on the Franciscan Order in Ireland between the 13th and 16th centuries. James Joyce set the ninth episode of Ulysses in the National Library where Stephen Dedalus is depicted talking about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was in fact the rejection of membership in the mid1830s to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin (Daniel Murray) to the National Library’s immediate predecessor organization (The Royal Dublin Society) that led to a campaign in the House of Commons by the Conservative MP for Limerick (Will O’Brien) to reform this elitist Society so that it, as well as any reference institution connected to it, would extend admission privileges without concern of party affiliation or religion.