Chino Theater
Central Avenue at Riverside Drive,
Chino,
CA
91710
Central Avenue at Riverside Drive,
Chino,
CA
91710
2 people
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The Chino opened in 1947. A Los Angeles Times story of July 1958 stated that the theater was already dark.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre
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Recent comments (view all 18 comments)
A few comments.
I live 3 miles from this former theater. It is NOT in Riverside. It is in downtown Chino, near Riverside DRIVE. Perhaps this is what was meant!
The vertical signpost, if you will, is still there and spells out CHINO in letters that are in good shape. The facade is no longer indented as shown in the picture—which must have been gorgeous. It is now flat.
To answer Ken’s question, it is a few miles east of the 71. It is much closer to the 60, if you were to get off 60 at Central and go South it is a few blocks down, you can’t miss it.
A 10 lane bowling alley is pretty small!
We live in an amazing area. Only a few miles North of the Chino is the Pomona Fox. You may remember that this theater was very glamorous and used by Fox to preview movies to get reactions from non-city non-Hollywood audiences, as it was still relatively closeby.
I went down to the Chino Theater site and took some pictures of it today, September 15th 2007. I put them up on my own site for the enjoyment of others. Here it is:
View link
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
That is a terrible looking photo.
The 1948 (and later) city directories give an address of 134 S. Central Ave.