The 1920s-era Lincoln Theater was the biggest venue on Central Avenue run by, and for, the Black community in LA. This is where you’d hear Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and T-Bone Walker, plus stage shows, comedians and first-run films.

I’m celebrating Black History Month throughout February by visiting sites important to the history of Black Angelenos.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 17, 2009

From the late 1920s through the early ‘50s, Central Avenue in South LA was an entertainment mecca for Black Los Angeles. Nightclubs, theaters and lounges thrived, catering to African-Americans who came to hear some of the world’s great performers without encountering the discrimination they met elsewhere in the city. Of the half-dozen theaters on Central Avenue, the Lincoln Theater was the largest and the last remaining one that catered to a specifically Black audience. 

The Lincoln was built in 1926-7 in the style of the grand movie palaces – think the Million Dollar (see visit # 39) downtown, or Grauman’s Egyptian and Chinese theaters, the latter of which was built in the same year. The Lincoln was intended as a multi-purpose theater, with a capacity of 2100 and a flexible enough setup to host large concerts and dance shows, stage plays and vaudeville acts in addition to first-run movies. It opened in early October 1927 with the “Chocolate Scandals” revue, featuring a comedian, dancing and a set from Curtis Mosby’s Dixieland Blue Blowers. Then audiences watched the silent film Rose of the Golden West, starring Mary Astor and Gilbert Roland. The respected Black drama company Lafayette Players became the Lincoln’s house acting troupe in 1928.  

+Listen to a recording by Curtis Mosby and His Dixieland Blue Blowers, recorded just after they played at the Lincoln’s opening

The Lincoln was sometimes called the “West Coast Apollo” because so many of the same acts that played the Apollo Theater in Harlem would perform here when they swung through LA. We’re talking the absolute top names in jazz, blues and pop: Billie Holiday, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, T-Bone Walker, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Fats Domino, Sammy Davis Jr. and BB King, among so many others.

If you couldn’t guess from that list of performers, the Lincoln was slick. The facade showcased some killer Moorish designs on the facade designed by architect John Paxton Perine; inside you’d find a pipe organ, plush carpeting, mohair upholstery on the upstairs and downstairs seating, and a portrait of Honest Abe Lincoln as you walk up the central staircase (since covered up). In the marvelous oral history book Central Avenue Sounds, Marshal Royal, a lead alto saxophonist for Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, sets the scene: 

The Lincoln Theater was a big-time place for the blacks in town, because that was the first theater that was run by blacks in that area. You couldn’t’ get into that place on Saturdays and Sundays. Just loaded. On top of that, they had probably twelve of the most beautiful black girls in town as usherettes at the theater. A lot of the men around the neighborhood just came to look at the usherettes….There wasn’t a tater among the whole group. [laughter]

-Marshal Royal, as quoted in Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles

After a few decades as an entertainment venue, the Lincoln was sold to a church and dedicated as The Crouch Temple, by Bishop Samuel Crouch. It’s stayed parochial for the last 60 years, with some time spent as a mosque; it’s now a Spanish-language church hosting services by the Iglesia de Cristo Ministerios Judá.

Recommended Reading

+Lincoln Theater NRHP nomination form

+Lincoln Theatre (Los Angeles Theatres blog) – tons of archival & inside photos

+Lincoln Theatre (LA Conservancy)

+VIDEO: Three Underrated Historic Buildings in South LA (Eric Craig on YouTube)

+Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (1999) (book edited by Clora Bryant, Buddy Collette, William Green et. al)