ARCHITECTS

Born Simeon Charles Levi in Chicago on September 5th, 1899, Lee attended Chicago Technical College and graduated with honors in 1918. He was influenced by the early, Chicago-based design of pioneers Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

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After serving in the Navy during World War I, Lee earned an architecture degree from Armor Institute of Technology in 1921. He moved to Los Angeles in 1922 and soon started designing movie theatres, including the Tower Theatre on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, billed as “the finest thousand-seat theatre in America,” and the Fox Wilshire. The Los Angeles Conservancy said, “His grand movie palaces transported patrons from their everyday lives into a fantasy world that blended all types of architectural styles and decorative motifs.” His career coincided with the heyday of Hollywood, so that by 1950 Lee had designed around 400 theatres—250 in the L.A. area alone. He also designed the Max Factor building in Hollywood as well as resorts: in Palm Springs, the Hotel del Tahquitz, and in La Quinta, a gorgeous Art Deco resort called the Desert Club – both long gone.

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As the theatre business cooled post-war, Lee turned his skills to development, partnering with Samuel Hayden to build dozens of factories around what became the Los Angeles International Airport. Lee’s daughter Connie married George Keiter who, by the mid-50s, had become Lee’s business partner. Motivated by Connie Keiter’s award-winning amateur golf prowess, Keiter and Lee developed Tamarisk West starting in 1964, adjacent to Tamarisk Country Club. S. Charles Lee also had a home there, as well as his daughter and son-in-law.

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Lee died on 27th January, 1990 and is buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale, CA.