Unique Theater
129 W. First Street,
Salida,
CO
81201
129 W. First Street,
Salida,
CO
81201
2 people
favorited this theater
The Unique Theater first opened as an opera house on New Years Day, 1890. The theater was converted to films sometime in the 1930’s. This theater is truly, as its name suggests, unique. I have never seen one quite like it. It is a caverous Art Deco style theater.
It is currently owned by John Groy, whose parents owned it before him. They obtained it when they traded their drive-in theater in Salida with the owner of the Unique Theater for the theater. The Groy Family also owns the Comanche Drive-In and Pearl Theater in Buena Vista, Colorado.
The theater operated Friday through Tuesday but was closed briefly as of August 2006 for some structural repairs. Sadly, it never reopened.
Contributed by
Tony Hernandez
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Recent comments (view all 33 comments)
The booth at the Unique contained 2 Super Simplex projectors with Xetron xenon lamphouses. The projectors ran 6 thousand foot changeover. There was also a separate room off the booth used for building up prints in the nitrate days.
It looks like a fairly largeg building, does anyone know what the seating capacity was for the theatre?
It was very large and so was the auditorium. According to the Film Daily Yearbook of 1942, it is listed as the Salida Theater (it’s name at the time) as having 600 seats. It still had around that many seats when it closed.
A photo taken in April 2007 of the Unique…sorry to hear this local treasure is endangered!
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This is a Unique 1983 photo.
Header should have aka’s Salida Opera House and Osos Grand Theatre.
It appears that what little remains of the Unique is yet again in peril. The current owner seems to be having trouble coming up with the funds to complete the renovation and would sooner just bulldoze the entire thing than mess with it anymore and the city is demanding that the owner clean up what he started or else they will demolish it and repossess the land. You can read about it all at the Salida Mountain Mail (newspaper) website…simply search “Unique Theater”.
Timeline:
January 16, 1889 Opened as the SALIDA OPERA HOUSE.
1909 Renovated to accommodate motion pictures and renamed OSOS GRAND THEATER.
1936 named SALIIDA THEATER.
Late 1960’s renamed UNIQUE THEATER.
At one time it was named EMPRESS THEATER.
Last owned by John Groy.
August 7, 2006 Closed.
November 10, 2010 AFTER 121 YEARS THE ENTIRE BUILDING IS STILL STANDING!
JET
1930-1935 named EMPRESS THEATER.
Anyone have more info or more photos, especially of the interior.
The Opera House in Salida is listed in the 1897-98 edition of the Julius Cahn Official Theatrical Guide. G.W. McGovern was Mgr. It had 850 seats, was on the ground floor with tickets costing from 25 cents to $1. It had the “Edison system” of electric lighting. The proscenium opening was 25 feet wide X 15 feet high, and the stage was 36 feet deep. There were 2 newspapers and 3 hotels for show folk. The 1897 population of Salida was 3,500.