Garden Oaks Theater
3750 N. Shepherd Drive,
Houston,
TX
77018
3750 N. Shepherd Drive,
Houston,
TX
77018
2 people
favorited this theater
Like the Santa Rosa Theatre, the Garden Oaks Theatre was built in the late-1940’s by Interstate Circuit Inc. and was a sub-run 28 day house off downtown Houston. The theater was in an “L” shape design. A second screen was later added it was had been a retail space in the theater building. It operated at least through the mid-1990’s and is a church today.
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eadkins
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Recent comments (view all 11 comments)
The Garden Oaks was still in operation through the 1990s. The theatre has grown old gracefully and dispite years of neglect, she is still a beauty. The theatre was never split, but a second auditorium was added right off the lobby in a space that was previously used for retail.
The Garden Oaks Theater is currently under rennovations to bring it back to it’s glory days. Under the NET Church umbrella, our mission is to restore and convert the old Garden Oaks Theater into a cultural center for theater and the arts. Our secondary mission is to become an influential cultural center for performance, training and equipping leadership in the 21st century in central Houston. To complete the mission we will offer a range of classes, productions and events through creating a NET-work called the Christian Cultural Net work that trains and equips, and provides opportunities for quality artist and hosts a plethora of cultural activity and opportunity for the Garden Oaks, Timber oaks, Oaks Forest and The Heights communities as well as the greater Houston area.
Currently, there is asbestos problems in the ceiling of the main theater – once the asbestos abatement is completed the final rennovations will begin with a target to dedicate the building in September of 2006. We welcome anyone that would like to join us in restoring one of Houston’s finest old treasures.
Wow! That’s amazing!
I remember seeing many films here…one memorable night in particular seeing Burt Reynolds in ‘Hooper’ with my dad.
In the early 90’s when this theater was in limbo, i remember going in one afternoon and talking to the old hispanic man who owned it: Al Zarazama. He saw that I really had the passion for the old cinemas, which surprised him, as I was only in my early 20’s then. The big theaters were just killing him and he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He told me that day that I should try to get some investors…and if I did, hed sell the theater to me. I was 23 or 24…it was an impossible dream fro me to even ponder. But I think about that sometimes.
A look back at the Garden Oaks Theater in Houston from 1998.
The Garden Oaks was one of several post-war Houston theaters designed for the Interstate Circuit by H.F. Pettigrew and John A. Worley of the Dallas firm of Pettigrew & Worley.
The Garden Oaks opened on July 10, 1947. The premier feature was “The Sea of Grass” with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.
Nice nighttime shots,nice looking shopping center theatre.
I saw Saturday Night Fever here in early 1978. I was 8 yrs old. I remember while driving away from the theater late that night, on Shepherd going toward 610, seeing what looked like an old woman laying in the street at the curb. I don’t think anyone else in the car saw this but me.. I never forgot it.
I have some nice photos of the Garden Oaks theater but I don’t know how to post them here. I got them off an old website twenty years ago. I have no idea who owns them but they are really nice including some interiors. Ray Frazier