Found on EBay – Mason Opera House

A nice postcard of the Mason Opera House (now the site of a huge, vacant pit on Broadway between 1st and 2nd streets) has been listed on EBay. The Mason Opera House/Operahouse was one of the leading theaters in Los Angeles and featured many top performers of the early 20th century,  including Ruth St. Denis, Julian Eltinge and Geraldine Farrar.  The Mason was demolished in the 1950s to make way for a Cold War Moderne state building and Concrete Nouveau parking structure that were finally torn down after being damaged in the Northridge quake.  Bidding starts at $6.

Comments

[Arye Michael Bender]

Almost without exception, and especially true of the those exquisite Nuestro Pueblo ink-pen sketches, the current day pictures of L.A. are bleak compared to the images from a more vibrant past.

This is less due to the lens of nostalgia than to L.A.'s dedication to tearing down the old and replacing past beauty with chain link and asphalt. One of the reasons I left L.A. for San Francisco. Here architecture is treasured and green zones are treasured, not destroyed.