When impresario Oliver Morosco sought to establish his theatrical empire in downtown Los Angeles, he commissioned a building that would embody the city's pre-Hollywood entertainment ambitions. The Globe Theatre opened in 1913 as the Garland Building, designed by the established firm of Morgan, Walls & Morgan with interiors by Alfred F. Rosenheim. This was not yet another movie palace but a legitimate dramatic theater paired with an eleven-story office tower, representing Broadway's evolution into a vertical urban entertainment district. The building emerged during the crucial transitional moment when live performance still competed vigorously with film, and downtown Los Angeles was asserting its metropolitan density through mixed-use commercial architecture.
The exterior presents a dignified Beaux-Arts composition that balances commercial respectability with the more volatile entertainment program contained within. Morgan, Walls & Morgan crafted a facade that gave Broadway the sophisticated urban character it sought in the 1910s, while Rosenheim's interior design emphasized the intimacy and stage orientation required for dramatic productions rather than film projection. The eleven-story office component provided the vertical density that distinguished this hybrid building from single-purpose theaters, creating what was essentially an urban entertainment machine wrapped in classical commercial dress. The theater's original configuration prioritized live performance with sightlines and acoustics designed for the human voice and orchestral accompaniment rather than the projection booth requirements of later cinema houses.
