"Jesus Saves" Moves to Glendale

By Alexis Shaw

|  Wednesday, Sep 14, 2011  |  Updated 5:51 PM PDT

Flickr/bradley_newman

The neon sign towers over the former United Artists theater in downtown Los Angeles.

Rest assured, fans of the glowing red "Jesus Saves" signs that until recently graced downtown’s skyline.

The neon signs, a familiar presence in the downtown Los Angeles area for decades, will continue to glow-- in Glendale.

The signs, which soared above the former United Artists Theater, were removed this past Saturday evening.  

The billboards were originally installed atop the Church of the Open Door at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles’s campus at 6^th Street and Hope, and remained until 1985, when the building was demolished.

It is unclear what happened to the signs between 1985 and 1989.

In 1989, Dr. Gene Scott bought them from a junkyard and  moved them to the former United Artists Theatre building, which he transformed into the Los Angeles University Cathedral.

The signs remained above the former theater until Saturday.

Broadway-gaudy in style, reassuring in message, the signs served as a beacon to congregants across the deacdes.

One member of the Church of the Open Door remembered the signs fondly.

"It is sad to see them go," Yvonne Crespo Black commented on the NBC LA Facebook page. "Too bad we can't have them for our new building in Glendora."

Church of the Open Door's Executive Administrator, Judy Cocoris, also expressed similar sentiments.

"I would like to see them [the signs] go to Biola or the Church of the Open Door, but it doesn't really seem like that's possible."

The Los Angeles University Church has moved and set up camp full-time in Glendale at the Faith Center Church, now led by Scott's widow, Pastor Melissa Scott.

The signs are moving with them, reports LA Times’ Larry Harnisch.

According to Curbed LA, the former United Artists theatre has been for sale since 2009, with an asking price of reportedly $15 million, and still has not sold.

One of Downtown's Jesus Saves Signs Taken Away in Dead of Night

Monday, September 12, 2011, by Adrian Glick Kudler

Large photo via blogdowntown; inset via Marc Evans
Blogdowntown is reporting that one of Broadway's neon Jesus Saves signs had been taken down and was getting packed onto a truck at 9:30 pm on Saturday night, which is kind of a weird time to be doing work like that. The first of the Jesus Saves signs originally went up on the Bible Institute of Los Angeles at Sixth and Hope in 1935, but they were both moved to the old United Artists Theatre on Broadway in 1989, when the building was taken over by the University Cathedral. The blog says that on Saturday "a crew from Chief Sign Company was busy strapping one of the two signs onto a truck for transport as glass tubes lay shattered around the Hill Street parking lot. Those working would not give any information about where the historic neon might be headed." The UA building went up for sale in 2009 asking $15 million, but it still hasn't sold--although maybe this is a sign it's close?
· "Jesus Saves" Neon No More at United Artists? [blogdowntown]
· Downtown's "Jesus Saves" Building for Sale [Curbed LA]

"Jesus Saves" Neon No More at United Artists?

By Eric Richardson
Published: Saturday, September 10, 2011, at 09:58PM

Eric Richardson / blogdowntown A crew from Chief Sign Company removes one of the neon "Jesus Saves" signs from atop Broadway's United Artists Theatre. » Photo Gallery (3)

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The twin pair of neon "Jesus Saves" that have been a familiar part of the skyline since 1935 may have shed their last light over Downtown.
As of 9:30pm on Saturday, a crew from Chief Sign Company was busy strapping one of the two signs onto a truck for transport as glass tubes lay shattered around the Hill Street parking lot. Those working would not give any information about where the historic neon might be headed.
As blogdowntown documented last year, the first sign went up on February 17, 1935, atop the north dormitory of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles' campus at 6th and Hope. The second was added later atop the south dormitory.
The signs were placed atop the former United Artists theatre building in 1989 by Dr. Gene Scott.
The 1927 theatre, owned by Scott's University Cathedral, has been on the market since 2009. The church has been run by Scott's widow since his 2005 passing.

The Journey of the "Jesus Saves" Neon

By Eric Richardson
Published: Thursday, September 16, 2010, at 02:47PM

Eric Richardson [Flickr] This pair of "Jesus Saves" neon signs have stood atop the United Artists theatre since 1989, but the first went up Downtown in 1935.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — They’re a familiar fixture in the Downtown skyline, but many who have seen the pair of neon “Jesus Saves” signs have little idea just why exactly they shine out over South Park every night.
Today the signs sit atop the United Artists Theatre, which since 1989 has served as home of the University Cathedral.
That spot wasn’t where the signs first became famous, however.
The first sign was dedicated on February 17, 1935 by Rev. Louis T. Talbot and the congregation of the Church of the Open Door, which met on the campus of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles at 6th and Hope. It stood atop the school’s north dormitory, which had been converted to hotel use at the time.
A second sign was later added to the school’s matching south dormitory. There they stood for a half century.
In 1959 the school moved its operations to 50 acres in La Mirada, where today it is better known as simply BIOLA.
The church stayed, though, even as attendance started to drop. Where the congregation once averaged over 3,000 in the mid-1950s, only 600 to 800 were attending when the church decided to look at relocation in 1983. It inked a deal to purchase land in Glendora, and in January of 1984 signed a contract to sell the church facility to a developer who planned to raze it and build an office tower for $14 million.
It was when that deal fell through that things began to get interesting.
In January of 1986, television preacher Gene Scott purchased the church building for $23 million after the original developer defaulted. “Over my dead body will a wrecking ball now ever hit the front of that church or tear down those signs,” Scott told the L.A. Times, referring to the iconic “Jesus Saves” signs.
So well-known were the signs that the paper often referred to the structure simply as the `Jesus Saves’ Church in headlines.
Scott was welcomed by Church of the Open Door when he showed up to purchase their building, but later non-payment and legal wranglings left the two parties less than friendly.
The earthquake-damaged Hope Street building was finally torn down in 1988. Scott would lease the theater the following year, telling his congregation on the Sunday of the purchase that he had plans for the top of the building that could be “seen from the Harbor and Santa Monica freeways.”
According to an account given during an episode of Huell Howser’s “Downtown” series, Scott ended up purchasing the signs from a scrapyard after the church refused to sell them to him.
While the preacher passed away in 2005 and the theater building is up for sale, his signs are still visible from just as far away.