Brandon Wise UNDER CONSTRUCTION: The Nu Wilshire movie theater on Wilshire Boulevard is currently in the process of being remodeled into retail space. The city has designated the building’s facade a landmark. Theater’s facade gets designation
MID-CITY A 1930s era art deco-style movie house on Wilshire Boulevard that is fated for a life of retail was recently designated as an historical and cultural landmark, ensuring that the trademark old-Hollywood facade would be preserved in perpetuity.
The Landmarks Commission voted unanimously on Monday night to designate the Nu Wilshire Theater at 1314 Wilshire Blvd. as a historic piece of Santa Monica’s past. The theater, which was designed by the late architect John Montgomery Cooper, closed to business late last year after more than 70 years entertaining the community.
Soundview Investment Partners, which owns the building, is planning to renovate the theater to include several retail spaces and applied for a permit to remodel the Nu Wilshire in October 2006. Before its closing, the Nu Wilshire housed a theater, which was operated by Landmark Theatres, a shoe repair shop and a jewelry store.
“That (theater) has a 70-year history of it providing live entertainment and film entertainment for this community,” 20-year Santa Monica resident Tom Wilkins said at the meeting. “It is a significant reason to landmark the building.”
Wilkins, who has worked as a film designer for 25 years, said he and his mother often went to the movies and that up until the theater’s closing, patronized it with his son.
Remodeling plans for the theater include the addition of 3,000 square feet of retail space and subterranean parking. There are rumors that Anchor Blue and Lucky Dungarees could be tenants once the project is completed.
But the landmarks designation will restrict what the developer will be able to do with the facade of the theater. Included in the designation are several historic and cultural key attributes that “contribute” to the building, including the recessed shop-door entrances, the marquee and the patterned terrazzo-style floor. The marquee is not original to the movie theater — a Streamline Moderne style marquee replaced the original art deco one sometime after 1938.
Any exterior modification to the building must now be reviewed and approved by the Landmarks Commission, according to Roxanne Tanemori, the city’s associate planner. The building is already zoned for retail use and interior conversion can be done without a public hearing, Tanemori added.
The design of the theater is indicative of the style of architecture that was popular for motion picture houses during the 1930s, according to a report by city consultant PCR Services.
The reason why the building was landmarked had more to do with its relationship with Santa Monica’s history overall and not neighborhood sentimentality about the local theater, even though it was the latter that brought the theater before the commission, said Chairman Nina Fresco on Thursday.
“The reason we felt it met the criteria was that the art deco theaters of which we used to have many in Santa Monica are almost all gone and that one from that era is the only one remaining,” Fresco said. “This one in particular is very much intact in many ways.”
Fresco said as a preservationist, she would prefer the use for the Nu Wilshire remain as a theater, adding that in many theater conversions, the entry way is often brought all the way to the street, leaving the marquee in place and giving the illusion of a department store with an awning.
“If somebody doesn’t want to [keep it as a theater], that’s not my business,” Fresco said. “I have to make sure what’s important about the building will stay there throughout.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 18, 2008. Read the original PDF.