Warner Theatre
120 N. High Street,
West Chester,
PA
19380
120 N. High Street,
West Chester,
PA
19380
3 people
favorited this theater
Opened in 1930, the Warner Theatre in West Chester was designed by the firm of Rapp & Rapp in flamboyant Art Deco style. The vertical sign and facade of the West Chester Warner was very similar in appearance to the Rapp’s Warner Theatre (now the Erie Civic Center) in Erie, which opened a year after this theater.
After its movie days ended in the 1970’s, the Warner Theatre was renovated and live entertainment was presented for a few years, until the theater closed in the very early-1980’s. The Warner Theatre was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The auditorium was later demolished. The remaining front section of the former Warner Theatre building became local offices to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.
In 2011, groundbreaking was held to build a 76 room Warner Hotel, with the theatre’s lobby building to function as the hotel’s lobby.
Contributed by
Bryan
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Recent comments (view all 18 comments)
1985 photo of the Warner Theatre.
View link
1983 Photo
Here is another 1985 photo.
Here is an interior photo from the Irvin Glazer theater collection:
http://tinyurl.com/n55qt5
Another copyrighted photo?
I love that photo of the auditorium! What flamboyant decor!
Lost Memory; your photo link from 7/21/07 no longer works. Is there some way you can re-post it?
Sorry ziggy, it looks like the website that was hosting the 1930 photo is gone. But you can click on the link posted on Dec 3, 2006 to see another 1930 photo including a shot of the interior.
I have fond memories of the Warner. I went to my first movie on my own (sans parents) at the Warner to see Disney’s The Fighting Prince of Donegal. Later, in the early 70s, my high school English class was asked to leave in the middle of a special screening of The Lion in Winter which our English teacher had arranged for us.
I went to college in West Chester and seem to remember the Warner having a kind of art deco Egyptian motif. It was very impressive, at any rate. Movies were getting more permissive and much steamier when I was in college and I saw A Summer Place and Splendor in the Grass at the Warner. Both were the talk of the campus for days afterwards.
Groundbreaking August 11, 2011 for the Warner Hotel http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/08/11/groundbreaking-for-new-hotel-in-west-chester/
Theater’s lobby building to be lobby for 76 room hotel http://www.thewarnerhotel.com/