The Pan Pacific Auditorium (P.P.A.) was the place to be for sporting events, concerts, ice skating and other public gatherings. The P.P.A. opened its doors to hundreds of thousands of people for nearly 40 years, from opening day on May 18, 1935 to its sad but inevitable closing in 1972.
The Pan Pacific Auditorium was host to a variety of events such as Elvis Presley in concert, the Ice Capades, The Harlem Globetrotters, Los Angeles Monarchs and UCLA hockey, UCLA and USC basketball games, professional tennis, car shows, circuses and more. The auditorium was 100,000 square feet and had a seating capacity of up to 6,000.
Over the years, attendance dwindled plus in 1971, there was a new convention center in town by the name of The Los Angeles Convention Center and it put the final nail in the coffin of the old Pan Pacific Auditorium. In 1972, the Pan Pacific closed its doors and it sat abandoned for 17 years, but with a glimmer of hope that one day the complex would be restored. Well, on the of evening of May 24, 1989, that dream was dashed by a fire that destroyed the auditorium and any hopes of a restoration.
As with many things historic, there is usually someone or some entity that steps up to the plate and says, we need to preserve the memory of this place. And that’s what happened in this case. A recreation center was constructed
Another case of stepping up to the plate was done by Disney Corporation. On May 1, 1989 (just 3 weeks before the original was destroyed by fire) they constructed a near full scale replica of the front entrance of the Pan Pacific Auditorium at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. And on July 15, 2011, Disney’s California Adventure got a new entrance in the form of the famed auditorium’s entrance. For a glimpse of this new entrance at Disney’s California Adventure, watch the video below:
For more details about the Pan Pacific Auditorium, click the link below:
http://laist.com/2009/05/02/laistory_the_pan_pacific_auditorium.php
For even more details, here’s another site:
http://www.scottymoore.net/panpacific.html
