The 4th Street Corridor, also known as Retro Row, is a small business district in the city of
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California.
Incorporate ...
, along 4th Street from Walnut Avenue to Temple Avenue.
Located east of
Downtown Long Beach
Downtown Long Beach is the heart of Long Beach, California, United States, and is the location for most of the city's major tourist attractions and municipal services. It is also the location for numerous businesses. There are many hotels and rest ...
, this section of streets is the place for Long Beach visitors who enjoy vintage and kitschy shopping. Furniture and clothing from bygone eras is available in good condition at antique and used clothing stores. There are also a number of bars and restaurants.
Location
The 4th Street Corridor, roughly centered on Cherry Avenue, passes between several neighborhoods:
Alamitos Beach is to the south, North Alamitos Beach to the north-west, with
Rose Park South on the north-east.
Carroll Park, and
Bluff Heights extend to the south-east end of the business district.
Attractions and characteristics
4th Street is a unique showcase of Long Beach culture, with a collection of independent local businesses. Portfolio Coffeehouse has served as the street's de facto anchor since its establishment in September 1990,
[{{Cite web , url=http://www.everythinglongbeach.com/spotlight-on-business-portfolio-coffeehouse/ , title=Portfolio Coffeehouse: Java joint is a popular Rose Park hangout | Everything Long Beach , access-date=2010-06-17 , archive-date=2010-01-13 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100113023806/http://www.everythinglongbeach.com/spotlight-on-business-portfolio-coffeehouse/ , url-status=dead ] when it became the first coffeehouse in Long Beach to present poetry readings. 4th Street also features a number
vintage clothing
Vintage clothing is a generic term for garments originating from a previous era, as recent as the 1990s. The term can also be applied in reference to second hand retail outlets, e.g. i''n vintage clothing store''. While the concept originated ...
boutiques
antique furniture stores restaurants, and coffee shops, including the
Assistance League Assistance League is a national nonprofit organization in the United States with over 120 chapters dedicated to providing accessibility and fulfillment of community needs at the local level.
Each chapter focuses on helping their community with phil ...
Thrift & Vintage Shop.
4th Street is also home to The Art Theater,
[{{cite web , url=http://www.arttheatrelongbeach.com/ , title=Home , website=arttheatrelongbeach.com] the oldest operating single screen house in Long Beach. The Art Theatre originally opened in 1924 as The Carter Theatre with 636 seats, an
orchestra pit
An orchestra pit is the area in a theater (usually located in a lowered area in front of the stage) in which musicians perform. Orchestral pits are utilized in forms of theatre that require music (such as opera and ballet) or in cases when incide ...
and
pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...
. It was constructed in a modest
vernacular style with "orientalizing" touches reminiscent of
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre (branded as TCL Chinese Theatre for naming rights reasons) is a movie palace on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.
The original Chines ...
in
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood, ...
. Two storefronts flanked the theater. In 1934, the theater was remodeled in
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
Streamline Moderne
Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...
style by Schilling & Schilling
[{{cite web , title=PCAD - Schilling and Schilling, Architect and Engineer , url=http://pcad.lib.washington.edu/firm/668/ , website=pcad.lib.washington.edu] after the
1933 Long Beach earthquake
The 1933 Long Beach earthquake took place on March 10 at south of downtown Los Angeles. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach, California, on the Newport–Inglewood Fault. The earthquake had a magnitude estimated at 6.4 , and a m ...
and renamed The Lee Theatre. Additions included the ticket booth, terrazzo floor and zigzag elements like the stepped piers, vertical fluting, and the central-stepped vertical tower that unfolds as a fern. This tower has also been likened to the bow of a ship cutting through the water. In 1947, the theatre was remodeled again with a larger marquee and renamed The Art Theatre. In 2008, the theater was updated using the original blueprints, but with new interior, new sound and vision upgrades and restored exterior including a replica of the 1934 marquee and art deco trademark symmetrical storefronts.
Named Retro-Row by Christopher Reece in his Antique & Retro Shoppers Map, a guide to So. Calif. antiques shopping.
See also
*
Neighborhoods of Long Beach, California
Long Beach, California, is composed of many different neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods are named after thoroughfares, while others are named for nearby parks, schools, or city features.
Officially recognized neighborhoods
_Other_neighborho ...
References
External links
4th Street Business Association{{Long Beach, California
Neighborhoods in Long Beach, California
Geography of Long Beach, California
{{LosAngelesCountyCA-geo-stub