The Pan-Pacific Auditorium, originally located at 7600 West Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, was designed by Plummer, Wurderman and Becket and financed by a commmittee led by Clifford W. Henderson and his brother Phillip. Built in just fifty-six days, it opened on May 18, 1935 to a fanfare of Boy Scout bugles as "the largest of its sort in the West and one of the three largest in the nation." Famous for its streamlined moderne facade and its distinctive flagpole pylons curved like the fin of a fish, the auditorium was essentially Los Angeles's first convention center. In the 1940s, the Pan-Pacific became a permanent full-service auditorium. The concrete slab floor was claimed to be the world's largest indoor ice rink. Along with the Grand Olympic and Shrine auditoriums, the Pan-Pacific became one of Southern California’s major indoor sports facilities.

The National Housing Exposition, the Pan-Pacific's inaugural event, was one of a number of similar expos held across the country after the passage of the National Housing Act in 1934, which was designed to make home ownership affordable for all Americans. The Federal Housing Administration, which promoted these expos, encouraged the formation of a citizens committee in Los Angeles in order to stage the most ambitious of these events. Clifford and Phillip Henderson took charge of the committee, secured funding and a 12-1/2 acre parcel of land near the La Brea Tar Pits. The expo opened on May 18, 1935, and was the subject of a massive media campaign and billed as a "mini world's fair." The show ran until mid-June, and was a huge success, credited with jumpstarting the construction business in Los Angeles, and helping to ease the effects of the Great Depression for Angelenos.