I drive past this building alot and thought you might be interested in its history as told by BoxRec.com.
Olympic Auditorium: May 21, 1930
Olympic Auditorium: early 1940s?
The Olympic Auditorium in the 1990s
Olympic Auditorium today.
One of the most storied venues in boxing history, the "Grand Olympic Auditorium," located at 1801 South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, CA, USA, opened August 5, 1925 to a crowd of jewel-clad Hollywood film stars, prominent tuxedoed citizens, and other "common" folk. (Then-World Champion Jack Dempsey earlier had shoveled the first pile of dirt for the groundbreaking ceremony.) It had been built specifically for the 1932 Olympic Games, eventually hosting weight-lifting, wrestling, and boxing for those Games.
The original seating capacity was 10,400 (this included "standing-room only" patrons). It had one huge ground floor, with the boxing ring at its center. It also had an enormous balcony that stretched diagonally away in every direction toward the roof. The boxers' dressing rooms and showers were on the southern side of the basement floor.
The Olympic had weekly boxing shows during the 1920s, '30s, and '40s -- usually on Tuesday nights. It later shifted to Thursdays during the 1950s. After the Hollywood Legion Stadium shut down in 1959, the Olympic's shows moved to Fridays and Saturdays, and ran continuously until 1980. The Olympic Auditorium ran spot shows during the early 1980s, before closing later that decade. It had lost much of its luster due to age and the decay of its surrounding neighborhood.
In the late 1980s it was refurbished extensively and its seating capacity reduced to 7,500. The arena reopened for Oscar De La Hoya's WBO super featherweight title fight against champion Jimmi Bredahl in 1994. As of early 2005, it still held boxing shows. In the summer of 2005 it was sold to a Korean-American church group, who renamed it the "Glory Vision Center." As a result, the famed building ended its long, glorious history as a boxing venue.
Manuel Ortiz (L) v Jackie Graves...1951
I had no idea this was still an active boxing venue until seven years ago. How can something like that last 75 years then get turned into a church?