Theatre & Grounds

THEATRE & BUILDING 

photograph by Larry Underhill

The Velaslavasay Panorama is located inside the historic Union Theatre, a neighborhood landmark built in 1910 and located in the West Adams district of Los Angeles. The Union Theatre has enjoyed many incarnations over the years; in addition to being a movie theatre and play house of silent-era femme fatale Louise Glaum, it has hosted church meetings and served, appropriately enough, as the headquarters for the Tile Layers Union Local #18 for over 30 years.

The theatre was purpose-built as a motion picture hall in 1910. Using building and remodel records in addition to city directories, we have been able to piece together a timeline of the Union's history, and are on a continuing mission to uncover images and stories of this great neighborhood theatre. The theatre has had many different proprietors and names during the years it served as an entertainment venue, including being a part of the Fairyland chain of Southern California film theatres from 1915-1926.

In 1935, former screen vamp Louise Glaum opened an acting school and playhouse here, calling it Louise Glaum’s Little Theater at Union Square. Then in 1939, it was reconfigured back into a film venue, the Union, and operated under that name until it closed in 1953.

For a time in the 1970s, while serving as the headquarters for the Tile Layers, a student from nearby USC operated an after-hours weekly film series, showing cult and underground films and Saturday cartoon matinees for the neighborhood children. This K-Bel Theatre Film Society operated until 1975.

We hope that further research will yield additional information about the Union Theatre's early years. The Velaslavasay Panorama is proud to inhabit such a special place and will strive to continue the Union's tradition of bringing the public quality entertainments while continuing to refurbish and improve our grand home and fulfilling our panoramic destiny. The Velaslavasay Panorama also produces events, such as film screenings and presentations that vary from Automata's toy theatre productions, illustrated lectures, and silent film programs to craft circles and other experimentations.

 

GARDENS OF THE VELASLAVASAY PANORAMA

photograph by Sean Teegarden 

In the midst of an urban expanse, the blossoming gardens of The Velaslavasay Panorama offer an oasis of lush, tropical foliage and an escape from the city's everyday toils. The ever-evolving grounds are on view to astonish and educate the public.

Central features of the garden are the variety of intoxicating flora, carnivorous plant life, and poisonous euphorbia within the garden's exquisitely wrought gazebo - a cozy, shady refuge and vantage point from which to observe the immensity of the Panorama's thriving greenery.

 

 GARDEN FEATURES

 

The Pavilion of the Verdant Dream is a mist and meditation grotto which guests can enclose themselves in on scorching LA afternoons. The Pavilion's design draws inspiration from garden scenes described in traditional Chinese Opera, which the Velaslavasay held a series of in 2011, entitled Pursuing the Verdant Dream.

Lastly, the Isle of Penglai is a central waterfall reminiscent of the island home of the Eight Immortals from Chinese folklore. With exotic banana tress and a collection of fine succulents, the grounds are a calmative pleasure for the sense as well as a delight to behold.