Photo Essay: Jensen's Melrose Theatre (Now Ukrainian Cultural Center)

Photo: Bill Counter / Los Angeles Theatres

I didn't know I was going to a theater.



But then I looked up.

Once I examined the facade above and the sidewalk below...



It was clear that that's exactly where I was: Jensen's Melrose Theatre from 1924.



I thought I was just going to the Ukranian Cultural Center...



...but as soon as I walked into the door...



...I knew I had stumbled into someplace special.



It turns out that the Melrose Theatre was one of several ventures that brick maker Henry C. Jensen was involved in. You can still recognize the Jensen Recreation Center building on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park by its restored rooftop sign.



This theater primarily was meant to exhibit films...



...though now its ornately painted proscenium (with its recently restored plasterwork) surrounds a small stage which hosts occasional concerts and other live performances.



The floor has been leveled, too, to allow for community events like craft fairs, food festivals, and dancing.



Though the Melrose Theatre was owned by a German immigrant brick maker with materials from his own brickyard, the Ukrainian Cultural Center has occupied it since 1961.



They walled off the balcony to create upstairs classrooms (also used as dressing rooms for live performances), creating a small booth for the sound and lighting board operator.



The theater abuts Los Angeles City College, and – located just south of Little Armenia, east of the 101 freeway and west of Silverlake – is in an area that doesn't feel very "Hollywood" right now.



But how glorious to walk into and around a building like that...



...and be able to recognize the irrefutable evidence...



...that this once was a movie theater!

For some cool before and after shots of their restoration, visit the Ukrainian Cultural Center's Facebook page.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Golden Gate Theatre (Now CVS)
Photo Essay: The Art Deco Theater Inside Academy Cathedral, Inglewood
Photo Essay: A Hidden Theater in the Heart of Times Square
Photo Essay: The Restored Regent Theater, For Those About to Rock

Photo Essay: A Book By Its Cover

For those that have met me recently – say, since I moved to LA – I have many secret lives.

That time I broke a national news story as a teen reporter for my local city paper.

That time I won a game show.

That time I sang on the Twisted Sister Christmas album.

That time I was QVC's regular on-air guest.

That time I was a fledgling book arts sculptor.



Having already visited the International Printing Museum in Carson, CA – whose focus is more on the printing and papermaking side of things – I jumped at the chance to take a tour of Kater-Crafts Bookbinders...



...at their workshop in Pico Rivera where they've bound and restored books since 1965.



Their floor of tools, machinery and materials would fascinate even the casual observer...



...but for someone who has pored over color swatches...



...and agonized over fabrics...



...papers...



...and endsheets...



...this place is a wonderland.



In this digital age, bookbinding now kind of feels like an ancient art.



It's both handmade and industrial.



It involves sewing of signatures...



...which is done by machine...



...but the paper itself is fed by hand.



Every detail is examined to perfection by a real human...



...who inspects the work and throws it out if it's been done wrong.



Because of this attention to detail...



...Kater-Crafts doesn't do any large runs of new printing projects...



...books or clamshells....



...or anything else custom-bound.



Now that they're mostly digitized, libraries don't commission them to bind back issues of magazines anymore.



But somehow, Kater-Crafts has managed to be resilient enough...



...to be pretty much the only game in town.



UCLA has their own bookbindery, but Kater-Crafts is the only remaining independently-run, non-affiliated bookbinder in the State of California.



For the tactile inclined...



...and those with an affinity for colors...



...this place is such a candy shop.



Rolls of metallic sheets....



...eventually end up becoming debossed into book covers and spines.



Because this is such a rare art form, Kater-Crafts is relatively highly in demand for restoration projects...



...from people whose heirloom items have become worn out over the years...



...like family bibles and photo albums.

Kater-Crafts is a family business, currently run by the brother and sister descended from its original founder, who set up shop by the San Gabriel River on farmland where nothing else was around. Now, it's surrounded by an industrial park, and although they own the building and the land, they don't seem to have anybody to pass it down to.

I think I may have volunteered to take the business over.

But first, I need to enter their on-the-job training program to learn the cutting, folding, sewing, and gluing of the papers and endsheets and boards and covers.

I think I could be happy there. I didn't want to leave.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Book Arts at the International Printing Museum
A Missed Calling
A Case of Multiple Identities

Photo Essay: LA's Art Deco Olympic Stadium (Updated for 2019)

[Last updated 4/29/20 9:33 PM PT with naming rights to the field]
[Updated 7/12/19 8:44 PM PT with new info on the zodiac mural]

A couple weeks ago, I spotted a tweet about historic tours being offered at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and I jumped all over it. I'd long been fascinated with that place, maybe because I'd already visited the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and the completionist in me needed to also see where the 1984 Summer Olympics took place.

Or maybe it's because many of the other traces of the 1932 Olympics – including the world's first-ever Olympic Village, in Baldwin Hills – have vanished.

Or maybe it's just because I'd never been there before, but I've been to an actual Roman coliseum. Feeling a bit wistful for the Roman ruins of Tunisia, this is as close as I can get in Southern California.

I was actually the first member of the media to take the tour, and so I wrote an article about it for KCET's Travel Excursions section which you can read here. But, in typical fashion, I took so many great photos that haven't been published elsewhere, and it's just so hard for me to visit any place and not show it to you.

So here, take a gander.



My first visit to the Coliseum was exciting, replete with an actual printed Ticketmaster ticket (even though I had a press pass) and a wristband—and access through those darned locked gates.



I'd tried to ride my bike around the Coliseum once before, past the nude athlete sculptures of the Olympic Gateway by Robert Graham...



...and got booted out by security.



Now I could walk right through those arches of the peristyle.