Carthay Circle Theatre
| Carthay Circle Theatre | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney California Adventure |
| Land / area | Buena Vista Street |
| Type | Restaurant and park icon (replica theatre) |
| Opened | June 15, 2012 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 89.5 ft (27.3 m) |
| Status | Operating |
Carthay Circle Theatre is the name shared by a historic Los Angeles movie palace, demolished in 1969, and by the replica building that serves as the icon of Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort. The original theatre, which opened in 1926 at 6316 San Vicente Boulevard, hosted the premieres of several landmark films, including Disney's first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937. The Disney California Adventure version opened on June 15, 2012, as the centrepiece of the new Buena Vista Street; it contains no cinema, housing instead the Carthay Circle Restaurant, its lounge, and the private Club 1901.
The original theatre
The theatre was the centrepiece of the Carthay Circle development in Los Angeles, built by developer J. Harvey McCarthy, and opened on May 18, 1926, with a screening of The Volga Boatman. Designed in Spanish Colonial Revival style, with whitewashed walls and a tall octagonal tower, it was praised on opening by architectural journals as a dignified, cathedral-like building and became one of the best-known movie palaces of Hollywood's golden age, rivalled mainly by Grauman's Chinese Theatre as a premiere venue.
Its premiere list reflects that standing. Films first shown there included Romeo and Juliet in 1936, The Life of Emile Zola and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, and Gone with the Wind in 1939. Disney returned for the premiere of Fantasia in 1940. The Snow White premiere is the link most often cited in Disney history: the success of that film helped finance the studio's move to Burbank.
As single-screen palaces fell from favour, the theatre declined, and in 1969 its owner demolished it. Offices and later low-rise buildings and a small park occupied the site, and the theatre survives mainly in photographs and in the name of the surrounding neighbourhood.
Disney park versions
Disney first quoted the building in Florida. In July 1994 a reduced-scale version of the facade, centred on the octagonal tower, opened on Sunset Boulevard at Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studios) as the exterior of a shop, later called Once Upon a Time.
The California version is far more complete. Buena Vista Street recreates Los Angeles as Walt Disney found it on arriving in 1923, and the Carthay Circle was chosen as its terminus and visual anchor — the equivalent position to Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. The replica stands 89.5 feet tall, slightly smaller than the 1926 original but taller than Sleeping Beauty Castle, and is built at roughly three-quarter scale. It is a stylised recreation rather than an exact copy: the original's circular auditorium plan is absent, and the footprint and interior layout were redesigned for restaurant use.
Inside, the ground floor holds the Carthay Circle Lounge, while the main Carthay Circle Restaurant occupies the second floor. Its decor refers throughout to the theatre's Disney connection, including photographs and references to the Snow White premiere. Also on the ground floor, behind an unmarked door, is Club 1901, a small members-only lounge named for the year of Walt Disney's birth and reserved for Club 33 members — the California Adventure counterpart to that club's original location in New Orleans Square.