Hippodrome Theatre
2017 Fresno Street,
Fresno,
CA
93721
2017 Fresno Street,
Fresno,
CA
93721
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The Barton Opera House was possibly built in around 1907. I was renamed Hippodrome Theatre in around 1912 and began screening silent movies.
A small 4 Rank 2 Manual piano console Wulitzer (Opus 315) was installed. This organ was transfered to the White Theatre on Broadway (near the Hotel Fresno) and was installed in the same manner it had been at the Barton/Hippodrome – in a stand-alone swellbox backstage. Hayes McClaran removed the organ prior to the demolition of the White Theatre. The instrument is now owned by a collector in the Bay Area.
The Hippodrome Theatre was demolished in 1927, and T&D’s State Theatre (later Fox State/Esquire/Sequoia/Towne) was built on the site, opening in 1928.
Contributed by
Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
Here is a July 1923 item that was in the Fresno Bee:
Adolph Ramish of the West Coast Theater Company, Inc., a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures Corporation, announced in Los Angeles to-day that he expects to close a lease on the Hippodrome Theater property in Fresno within a week or ten days. The deal, which Ramish says is virtually closed, will give the West Coast Company a lease which is to be followed by the expenditure of a large sum in remodeling and refitting the theater, converting it into a modern, attractive theater.
Following the announcement from Bakersfield that the Hippodrome in Fresno had been purchased came the statement from Ramish that the deal only contemplates a lease, not a sale of the property. The West Coast Theater Company now has control of 210 theaters on the Pacific Coast, its operations including the California Theater in Bakersfield, Loew’s Warfield in San Francisco, Loew’s State in Los Angeles, Tivoli in San Francisco, T & D Theaters in Oakland and Berkeley, and formerly affiliated theaters in Sacramento, Stockton and Watsonville.
From the 1920s a postcard view of the Hippodrome Theatre in Fresno.
There is an article about the Barton Opera House here: View link and an archival photo of it here: View link
Comparing the pictures of the Barton Opera House and the postcard view of the Hippodrome, it is difficult to believe that they were the same building, but apparently was so.