page_title: Hazard's Pavilion
section_title: Clune's Auditorium
hierarchical_section_title: Hazard's Pavilion / Clune's Auditorium
caption_attribution_description: A color poster of the movie The Birth of a Nation
context_page_description: Hazard's Pavilion was a large auditorium in Los Angeles, California, at the intersection of Fifth and Olive Streets. Showman George "Roundhouse" Lehman had planned to construct a large theatre center on the land he purchased at this location, but he went broke and the property was sold to the City Attorney, Henry T. Hazard. The venue was built in 1887 by architects Kysor, Morgan & Walls at a cost of $25,000, a large amount for the time, and seated up to 4,000 people. The building was constructed of wood with a clapboard exterior, and the front was framed by two towers.
context_section_description: In 1906, Hazard's Pavilion was demolished to make way for a new Temple Auditorium.  The architect, Charles F. Whittlesey, and civil engineers John B. Leonard and C. R. Harris, created a building with a Spanish Gothic exterior and a vast auditorium with a simplified Art-Nouveau interior influenced by Louis Sullivan's Chicago Auditorium. Opened on November 7, 1906, with a performance of Aida, this was the largest reinforced concrete structure with the only cantilevered balcony in the world. It had the largest stage west of New York when it was completed, and it seated 2,600 people. A nine-story office block and retail shops were part of the complex.
  For a number of years during the 1910s, Billy Clune presented silent films in the auditorium, then called Clune's Auditorium or sometimes Clune's Theatre Beautiful. The landmark pro-Ku Klux Klan film, Birth of a Nation, had its world premiere at Clune's Auditorium on its way to becoming a massive success.
caption: Birth of a Nation (1915)
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