ABSTRACT
The official, textbook narrative is that modern architecture succeeded by overcoming a false architecture of eclecticism. On entering the theater itself, one encounters a strange world that further confounds categorization. The freely undulating curved surfaces and ceiling are Gaudiesque, but possess a pure, hard luster that one does not find in Gaudi. Moreover, they are far more dynamic than the curved surfaces of the Spanish architect. The superficiality of the exterior wall is expressed once more through the locational relationship between the structural columns and the exterior wall. Openings are cut into the wall, not between columns but directly above the columns. Art Deco was not done in by the Great Depression that began with the stock market crash of 1929. In spatial character, the interior of the Nissei is undeniably the polar opposite of so-called “eclectic” works of architecture.
