Varsity Theater
2402 Guadalupe Street,
Austin,
TX
78705
2402 Guadalupe Street,
Austin,
TX
78705
2 people
favorited this theater
I don’t know much about it’s history, but the Varsity Theater used to be a theater at the corner of Guadalupe Street and West 24th Street in Austin. Since closing, it was a Tower Records for years and it is now in other retail use.
If anyone knows the history of the theater, please update this description.
Contributed by
Nick Littlejohn
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Recent comments (view all 20 comments)
This is a recent photo of the former Varsity Theater.
The Varsity had a few notable first runs, like Easy Rider and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was the date night movie house for UT in the 60’s when I was at UT.
A 1990 view of the Varsity Theater in Austin.
Here are two 1984 photos:
Photo1
Photo2
Drove by yesterday, and Intellectual Property (see March 26, 2007 photo) has moved out, and the old Varsity building is currently up for lease once again….
Here is a series of photos from the mid 60’s plus one from 1936.
View link
I believe the 2nd floor version of the “split” varsity was in the early 1980’s. I worked at UT and we went to the Varsity fairly often. During the great Memorial Day Flood of 1981 a Disney cartoon feature (an old one)was showing, and we were there. When we left the theatre the flood was happening and the stop lights were not working or the street lights. I managed to see the street sign “rio grande” and thought that was funny because it was a river, a grand one. I believe in 1981 the movie we saw was on the upper floor, and it had been newly split to 2 floors.
Hill Country Deco attributes the design of the Varsity Theatre to architect W. Scott Dunne.
The restored blade sign was done by Ion Art of Austin Texas. It is 30 x 8 feet. There is an article about the new sign in the June 2012 issue of Signs of the Times.
Found some negatives I took in the 80’s of the mural while it was sorta new. The photo at the top of this page was the mural while Tower Records was in the building. The fire escape was taken down and a window was cut into the south corner of the building. There are 4 detail photos at my link.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12335678@N00/8435724203/in/photostream/