Granada 4

Les Taylor on December 28, 2011 at 8:59 am

I have created a Flickr group for any photos of the Granada or any employee related events. If you have any photos of the Reno Granada/UA Cinema 1 & 2 please post them here. Please list people if you know who they are.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/granadamovietheaterreno/

dfmiller1 on May 19, 2013 at 9:39 pm

Does anyone know what happened to David Stewart? I worked with him and curious of what he is doing.

Joe Vogel on September 19, 2014 at 2:35 pm

The March 8, 1916, issue of The Moving Picture World had a couple of paragraphs about the T & D circuit’s theater in Reno, which had opened recently. I haven’t yet been able to establish a definite connection between the T&D house and the original Granada, but I suspect that they were the same theater. The T & D was reported to have 1,600 seats, and the original Granada certainly had a large enough footprint to accommodate that many. The only other candidate, the Majestic, was built in 1910.

This weblog post, mostly about the Majestic, says that the Granada opened in 1915 as the Rialto Theatre and was renamed the Granada in 1926. It might have been called the Rialto for a while, but all the first Turner & Dahnken houses in a given city that I’ve come across so far were originally called the T & D Theatre.

Here are the paragraphs about the unnamed T & D house at Reno from the 1916 article:

“The Reno, Nev., house of this concern, representing its first venture outside California, was opened a short time ago and has been doing an exceedingly heavy business ever since. The opening attraction was ‘The Ne'er-o-Well’ and at the opening performances the crowd could not be handled through the main entrance, necessitating the use of the exits. Governor Boyle, Mayor Byington and many men prominent in the political and commercial life of the State were present at the opening and brief speeches were made, the firm of Turner & Dahnken being represented by E. B. Johnson. Later a banquet was tendered by R. L. Fulton, of the Reno Amusement Company to the stockholders of the concern and the honored guests.

“This theater is the finest in the state of Nevada and was designed by architect George A. Ferris. It has a seating capacity of more than 1600, about one-third of the seats being in the balcony. Music is furnished by the magnificent organ which attracted so much attention last year in the Palace of Mines at the Exposition at San Francisco. The new house is under the management of R. G. Hunter, formerly of Vacaville, Calif.”

Architect George A. Ferris established his practice at Reno in 1906, and became one of the region’s leading architects, designing such landmarks as the El Cortez Hotel in Reno and the Governor’s mansion in Carson City, as well as a large number of the public schools in the region.

rivest266 on May 3, 2016 at 5:21 pm

2 screens on November 15th, 1974. Grand opening ad in photo section.

DavidZornig on September 10, 2016 at 6:17 pm

1926 photo added courtesy of Stephen Gennerich‎.