Historic Park Theatre

I have been to several special events recently including Broncos games, The Living Dream, and the Silent Film Festival with Scott Wilseck and always have good fun. The films included were Charlie Chaplins last in that series in 1917, The Adventurer and Buster Keaton’s first independant film, One Week, from 1920. Pretty cool venue. Scott matched the timing of the movies very well and entertained in between. Thanks!

Chuck, I think you might have mistyped the link: this one works for me.

And the link posted on October 20, 2009 doesn’t work anymore…..can anyone help??

The Historic Park Theatre in Estes Park is the oldest continuously operated motion picture theatre in the USA. The auditorium has 224 vintage seats, a 12x24' screen, and a Motiograph AAA 35mm film projector. The tower is 65' high. See the web site for further information: www.historicparktheatre.com

As was that TALL tower!

The theater was saved. Story here:
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This was destroyed by fire today. It was apparently a complete loss

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A few views of the Park Theater from 2009.

Okay. When looking at that picture, you are looking East. The “street” you are looking down intersects at Moraine Ave. The street does not continue past this point. If you turned left, your next cross street would be Elkhorn. If you turned right, and then took an immediate left on Rockwell,the next street up, you would be driving along side of the theater.

I guess they must have created Weist last summer (08) when they did an extensive renovation of the area creating the Riverwalk. This was never a street but more of an alleyway in the past.

I have never heard or Weist. The theater is just a half a block south of Elkhorn and Rockwell runs behind the theater…

The Park Theatre is owned by myself and my family’s close friends. I have assisted in the theatre’s management and been the projectionist for the past two summers. The theater was originally just known as the Park Theatre and the historic part is indeed there because of its historic register status. The “mirror” that The Great One refers to is simply an angled sheet of glass that is over the projection opening in the auditorium. The angle causes a reverse reflection of the movie to show on the lobby’s west wall. The projection booth sits behind this wall, projects across the lobby, through this sheet of glass (in place to minimize noise and contain the theater’s heat) and on the screen.
Here are some brief highlights of the theater:
The projector is a Motiograph AAA, on a Motiograph Base and Motiograph Mirrophonic soundhead with a Strong xenon lamphouse and CFS platters. The theater converted away from carbon arc and changeover in the mid-1980s. The right projector was the same but with a Simplex XL projection head. This sat unused for many years and was finally removed summer of ‘07 so that we could build a rack for our Christie digital projector which is used for our slide show that runs before the movie and for the Estes Park Film Festival. In The summer of '08, we installed a brand new sound system and replaced/upgraded the center speaker.
The seats are circa 1930 and came to the Park second hand from the now demolished Denver Theater in Denver,Co. There is also a beautiful balsa wood panther from The Denver Theater that hangs over the exterior entrance/exit doors.
The theater ran “Gone With The Wind” on the same night it premiered in New York City. This was a very rare thing in those days when a film may not hit Colorado until 4 months after it came out.
Ralph Gwynn, the man who built the tower in remembrance of his bride to be who stood him up at the alter, owned the theater until he passed away in 1968. He never married and lived behind the screen…this is where he died.
The theater features a Vitaphone projector that is on display in the lobby.
The theater is believed to be the first movie theater in the country to have stereophonic sound.
There is an antique player piano in the lobby that was once in The Windsor Theater in Windsor,Co
The theater was built strictly as a movie theater and never featured vaudeville or opera, unlike many theaters its age. There is no real stage or dressing rooms. The fact that the village of Estes Park got a movie theater in 1913, two years before Rocky Mountain National Park was even established is very remarkable.
The original 1913 section of the theater is actually a prefab building…the walls were constructed down in Longmont and then hauled up the canyon on wagons.
The theater is believed to be home to many friendly resident ghosts/spirits including Ralph Gwynn and Ola Stanger.
*The theater still has a beautiful curtain that opens and closes before and after the feature. Sadly, the motor to the curtain broke in 2007 and we are working on having it repaired.

The Park Theatre is one of a kind. I would encourage any theater buff/historian to come out of their way to see it. The pictures and description can never do it justice. The theater is also a clean and unique place for anyone to relax and enjoy a movie with excellent projection!

It is called the Historic Park Theatre. It earned that title when it was put on the national registry of historic places in 1984.