Apple’s New Downtown LA Tower Theatre Store is a Literal Showplace
What happens when a historic theater becomes a store?
Commerce isn’t altruism, but Apple’s recurring acts of claiming, reviving, and revitalizing historic artifices in retail’s name is still laudable.
The Cupertino technology giant's latest reclamation project is opening its first Downtown Los Angeles, California, store on the site of the original Tower Theater, which opens to the public on June 24.
Built in 1927, the movie house, which hosted that inaugural year a sneak preview of the very first talking film (Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer), sat in ruin for more than 30 years, likely only saved from demolition by its designation as a Historic Place by the Los Angeles Conservancy.
Now, the Tower Theatre is alive again, but not with rolls of cellulose film and audiences packing into the floor and mezzanine watching the latest Fast and Furious entry. Instead, in the preview I saw, there are aisles of signature wood tables and rows and rows of freshy-minted Apple products.
