Chino Theater
12931 Central Avenue,
Chino,
CA
91710
12931 Central Avenue,
Chino,
CA
91710
2 people
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Architects: Simeon Charles Lee
Functions: Retail
Styles: Streamline Moderne
Nearby Theaters
The Chino Theater opened on October 22, 1947 with a sneak preview of Bob Hope in “Where There’s Life”. A Los Angeles Times story of July 1958 stated that the theater was already dark. In recent years it has been in retail use as T-Shirt Mart.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre
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Recent comments (view all 19 comments)
Nice photos. Thanks.
Status should be closed.
I spent alot of my teenage youth in the mid seventies bowling at the Chino Bowl,all ten lanes of it!,I remeber the snack bar and the counter with seating,the restrooms were upstairs,unsure if there was ever a balcony,would love to see pictures of the inside when it was a theater,I remeber the bowling alley as if it were yesterday…Does anybody remember the Woods Theater in Chino?,it used to be located in the old downtown section on 7th street,I remeber walikg by the old theater,never went inside it because it was closed,I remember when it was an army surplus store in the mid seneties,until it was razed sometime in the early 90’s….am curious to see what that theater looked like during its heyday..
Here is a picture of the foyer on opening night, from the UCLA collection:
http://tinyurl.com/a59xz6
Here is a photo from a 7/20/58 LA Times story about the Chino Theater. A group of Girl Scouts renovated the theater and re-opened it in an effort to raise money for a trip to Hawaii.
http://tinyurl.com/boxgcp
The 1948 (and later) city directories give an address of 134 S. Central Ave.
Bill (and Ken), Chino is one of those places that used to have a local numbering system but no longer does. The address from the 1948 directory is no longer in use. The current occupant of the former Chino Theatre is called T-Shirt Mart, and its address is 12931 Central Avenue.
Thanks, Joe!
This opened on October 22nd, 1947. Grand opening ad below:
Sometime between 1968 and probably 1971 I worked at the Crest Player Piano shop which is in the front corner of the Crest (Lyric) theatre on Foothill in Monrovia. I remember that the owner came in one day and said that he found an original photoplayer, possibly an American Fotoplayer, in a Chino Theatre. If I remember correctly, he removed the photoplayer from the theatre, but it was too large for his Crest player piano shop so he moved it to his garage or somebody’s else’s shop. Does anyone know this story or what Chino movie theatre had a photoplayer? It obviously had to be a theatre that presented silent movies.