Why you should experience El Portal Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
El Portal Theatre is a storied performance house where North Hollywood's entertainment character meets Spanish Renaissance Revival architecture, vaudeville history and a century of theatrical reinvention along Lankershim Boulevard.
Set along Lankershim Boulevard near Weddington Street and just steps from the North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Library, the theatre occupies the historic commercial spine of the southeastern San Fernando Valley, positioned on the broad Valley floor between the eastern Santa Monica Mountains and the Verdugo foothills. Its two-story street wall, original facade and projecting marquee remain prominent within a corridor now dominated by theaters, studios and larger contemporary development. The building's compact footprint concentrates its architectural presence directly against the boulevard, preserving the scale of North Hollywood's early commercial center within the surrounding Arts District. Lankershim Boulevard extends south toward the Cahuenga Pass and north across the Valley floor, placing the theatre on a corridor that historically connected the former agricultural settlement with Hollywood and Central Los Angeles. The result is a surviving neighborhood theater whose historic facade, boulevard frontage and position between the San Fernando Valley and Cahuenga Pass preserve a physical link to North Hollywood's emergence as an entertainment district.
What you should know about El Portal Theatre.
El Portal Theatre is best known for opening on October 5, 1926 as a vaudeville house and movie theater designed by Lewis Arthur Smith, among Southern California's prolific theater architects during the silent-film era. Hollywood Theatres commissioned the Spanish Renaissance Revival building for $100,000, and West Coast Theatres operated the venue at its debut. Ralph Graves starred in the opening film, Blarney, accompanied by a live program featuring Chinese performers and a Chinese jazz orchestra. The original auditorium contained 1,350 seats on a single level, creating one of the substantial entertainment houses in the San Fernando Valley at a moment when the surrounding community still carried the Lankershim name. The district adopted North Hollywood the following year as the Valley increasingly aligned its commercial development with the expanding motion-picture industry south of the Cahuenga Pass. Heinsbergen Studios subsequently contributed decorative work to the interior, including bas-relief scenes depicting episodes from California history. Fox West Coast Theatres substantially remodeled the auditorium in 1950, covering much of its earlier decorative treatment as the building settled into decades of motion-picture exhibition. Los Angeles designated El Portal a Historic-Cultural Monument in February 1993, recognizing one of the remaining buildings associated with the early commercial development of Lankershim Boulevard.
Actors Alley began converting the aging cinema into a live-performance venue in August 1993, setting in motion the most consequential reconstruction in the building's later history. A reopening had been planned for February 1994 when the Northridge earthquake struck on January 17, collapsing portions of the ceiling, cracking walls and inflicting more than $1.5 million in damage. Actors Alley continued performing in a $13,000 tent erected across Lankershim Boulevard as efforts to rescue the theater proceeded. The company acquired the property in 1996 and removed much of the damaged interior while retaining significant exterior components including the facade, marquee and ticket booth. Architect Richard McCann directed the conversion into a multi-stage performing arts center, replacing the former single auditorium with distinct performance spaces. Bernard and Judy Kaufman and Gary and Shari Goodgame subsequently partnered with Actors Alley in completing the project, and the rebuilt El Portal opened in January 2000. The former movie palace now contained the MainStage, Monroe Forum and Studio Theatre, allowing productions of sharply different scales to operate within the same historic shell. Performers during the renewed era have included Debbie Reynolds, Bea Arthur, Carol Channing, Charles Nelson Reilly, Hal Linden and Jason Alexander, with The Marvelous Wonderettes completing a 19-month run before continuing off-Broadway. The reconstruction preserved El Portal through a catastrophic earthquake and converted a neighborhood cinema into a working theatrical complex at the center of North Hollywood's contemporary performing-arts district.
How to fold El Portal Theatre into your trip.
El Portal Theatre works as the anchor for a North Hollywood outing connecting a nineteenth-century railroad depot, the permanent institutional home of the Emmy Awards organization and a half-mile mural created through one of Los Angeles's most ambitious public-art programs.
Begin at Lankershim Depot, constructed 1896 after Southern Pacific extended rail service through the agricultural settlement then known as Toluca. The wood-frame station supported shipment of livestock and agricultural products as orchards and ranches drove the local economy, then gained another transportation role when Pacific Electric service arrived in 1911. Its gabled roof, open freight shed, sawn bargeboards and brackets survive from a period when rail infrastructure helped transform the southeastern San Fernando Valley into an urbanizing district. Continue to Television Academy, whose search for a permanent headquarters accelerated during the late 1980s after ABC chief Leonard H. Goldenson contributed a $1 million construction grant for a new theater. The organization moved to its North Hollywood headquarters in May 1991, establishing administrative offices and the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre around a plaza conceived by production designer Jan Scott. Scott, an 11-time Primetime Emmy winner, supervised the Hall of Fame sculptures and exterior bas-reliefs, with the grounds centered on an 18-foot, 1,750-pound silicon-bronze Emmy figure fabricated by 45 craftspeople. Conclude at The Great Wall of Los Angeles, conceived by artist Judith F. Baca after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approached her in 1974 about creating artwork within the Tujunga Wash. Baca and the Social and Public Art Resource Center developed the project across five summers between 1976 and 1983 with more than 400 young people, artists, historians, scholars and community participants. The mural extends 2,754 feet along the concrete flood channel and depicts California history from prehistoric periods through the 1950s, giving sustained visual attention to communities omitted from conventional historical treatments. The progression moves from the railroad infrastructure that supported the Valley's agricultural settlement through the permanent headquarters of the institution behind the Emmy Awards and culminates in Judith F. Baca's immense public artwork, tracing North Hollywood and the surrounding Valley through transportation, television and community art.
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