Teatro Azteca
708 N. Mount Vernon Avenue,
San Bernardino,
CA
92411
708 N. Mount Vernon Avenue,
San Bernardino,
CA
92411
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Additional Info
Previous Names: Columbus Theatre, New Azteca Theatre
Nearby Theaters
Opened around 1922 as the Columbus Theatre. Over the years it operated as a Spanish language movie theatre, and was showing Mexican movies from 1938 when it was operated by Feldstein & Dietrich as the Teatro Azteca. By 1981 it was named Azteca Theatre.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
Advertised as a Spanish language theater in the LA Times on 3/15/81.
Here is a 1983 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/d2aa3v
Theatre building is still standing.
This PDF from the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society has two photos, one depicting the Teatro Azteca dated 1988, and a much older but undated photo showing the same building when it housed a theater called the Columbus.
As near as I can discover, the Columbus Theatre opened around 1922 or 1923, and originally served an Italian-American community. That population must not have been large enough to support the theater for long, though, as an item in The San Bernardino County Sun of May 15, 1930, about a real estate deal involving the building, referred to the Columbus as a Mexican movie theater.
The Columbus had its entrance in the first bay of the building, at the corner of 7th Street. I’ve been unable to discover when the house was remodeled and the entrance moved to the center bay, or when it was renamed the Azteca.
Renamed Teatro Azteca in 1938. Played Italian films and Spanish language films and was operated by Diertrich & Feldstein. A dance hall was housed on the second floor. In the 1940s, it dropped Italian films switching to full time Spanish langauge films for more than four decades. The theatre was remodeled in 1971 as the New Azteca Theater and the early 1980s as Teatro Azteca. It was closed by law enforcement on March 31, 1989 for safety reasons and appears to have closed permanently. Its proper name is Teatro Azteca which it operated as for more than 40 years closing with that name.