Del Mar Theatre
1124 Pacific Avenue,
Santa Cruz,
CA
95060
1124 Pacific Avenue,
Santa Cruz,
CA
95060
12 people
favorited this theater
Opened on August 14, 1936 with “China Clipper”, the 1,521-seat Del Mar Theatre has served the college town of Santa Cruz, California for almost 65 years.
After years of struggling through dollar nights and intermittent attendance, the Del Mar Theatre was sold in 1999 and closed.
After an extensive renovation and restoration, the Del Mar Theatre reopened in February of 2002.
Contributed by
Tom Mayer, Jacob Hunter
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Recent comments (view all 34 comments)
This is the Del Mar at night.
Here is another November 2008 photo of the Del Mar.
A December 2008 photo is here.
This is a nice February 2009 photo.
No March or April photo but here is one from May.
A photo from January 2010:
View link
Here’s a recent photo: http://www.thewholeearthisfilledwithhisglory.com/theaters/067a.html
The name in the architect field is misspelled. It should be Chavalis, but I’m not sure he was actually the architect in any case. As far as I’ve been able to determine, William Chavalis was a painter who worked with Gale Santocono. Chavalis painted murals in the Cascade Theatre in Redding, California, among others.
I’ve also been unable to find any references indicating that the firm Salih Brothers designed any buildings. They were general contractors operating a major construction company, and also operated at least one theater themselves (the Center in Fremont, California,) but I can find no evidence that any of them were architects or even designers. Their own theater, the Center, was designed by A. A. Cantin. It, too had murals by William Chavalis.
Here’s another photo of the Del Mar:
http://www.thewholeearthisfilledwithhisglory.com/theaters/067b.html
When I first started working at the Del Mar in 1986, the theatre’s GM at the time, Joe, gave me a ~80 page thesis paper done up by a UCSC student about the history of the Del Mar Theatre, for its 50th anniversary. I may still have it in storage somewhere, but considering some of my stuff may still be in storage in Los Angeles at my dad’s place, it might take a while to locate.