Guided Tours  •  Self-Guided Downtown Tour
 

Built in 1911 as the third home of the Orpheum vaudeville circuit in Los Angeles, this theater is now the oldest remaining original Orpheum theater in the country. The greatest singers, dancers, comedians, acrobats, and animal acts in vaudeville performed here for fifteen years, until the Orpheum moved to its fourth and final location at Ninth Street and Broadway in 1926.

G. Albert Lansburgh, who designed both the 1911 and 1926 Orpheum Theaters, was one of the principal theater designers in the west between 1909 and 1930. In addition to commissions in Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis and New Orleans, his works included the Warner Bros. Theater Building in Hollywood (1927), and the interiors of the local Wiltern and El Capitan theaters.

Loosely styled after a Florentine early Renaissance palazzo, the façade features multicolored terra-cotta swags, flowers, fairies, and theatrical masks illustrating the spirit of entertainment. Four panels depicting the muses of vaudeville - Song, Dance, Music, and Drama - were sculpted by noted Spanish sculptor Domingo Mora. While the structure's exterior displays Italian influences, its interior decoration is distinctly French, with garland-draped columns and a color scheme of pale pastels.

The theatre currently operates as a rental facility for special events and location filming.