Riviera Theatre
1560 S. Dixie Highway,
Coral Gables,
FL
33146
1560 S. Dixie Highway,
Coral Gables,
FL
33146
3 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 37 comments
Closed as a Cinema on January 29th, 1999, per:
Riviera Cinema closing 04 Feb 1999, Thu The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) Newspapers.com
Wow, thanks for posting this. I’ll never forget watching “2001: A Space Odyssey” at my San Remo Apartment (now demolished), and rushing to this nearby theater to watch “2010: The Year We Make Contact” in 1984 - with minutes to spare. was a UM student, and went there often.
The Riviera Theatre, as well as the entire Riviera Plaza shopping center of which it was a part, was demolished in the days leading up to May 25th, 2021, when I gazed down from the northbound Metrorail car I was riding on and saw machinery removing the last piles of debris.
Only the marquee still stands alone at the sidewalk on US-1. (I walked by today and confirmed this. I hope the developers leave it there or incorporate it into the new Publix project as I’ve always enjoyed how it sort of had its own identity physically separate from the building.)
Rest in peace Riviera…
That area was my neighborhood, while I was a film student at UM in the early 80s. We turned in our film to the “Stock Room” in the “Film Shack” on campus, then a person took it over there for us. I never set foot in Riviera Photo myself.
I did go to several films at the theater while in college, but never as a child, when I first lived in Miami from 67 until 73.
I wonder what will happen to the old Publix space, on Riviera Park. I’m guessing condos, etc. I lived in an apartment right on the park. I also worked as a front desk clerk at nearby The University Inn (OWNED by UM at the time). UM had NO idea that the sleazy general manager was allowing porn to be filmed in the Don Shula Suite. There also was a hep C outbreak in the restaurant. I think the building along the canal, now houses business suites.
The Riviera Theatre is closed.
Of the businesses in the Riviera Plaza shopping center, the theater was the centerpiece and the last to go.
In early February 2020, a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, I noticed that all of the Plaza’s storefronts other than the theater were permanently closed, with some posting signs saying they had relocated elsewhere. The Area Stage Company that was using the Riviera Theatre remained, probably until the shutdown, and is moving a block south to a space inside the Sunset Place shopping mall on the second floor near Barnes & Nobles.
When I walked by on July 27, 2020 the stores were still vacant. Curious, I Googled “Riviera Plaza”… and discovered that Gadinsky Real Estate, LLC has plans to turn it into a “70,000 sq. ft. multi-level Publix-anchored shopping center”, that would apparently require the original Plaza to be removed…
I believe that in the immediate area the only businesses that date back to when the Riviera Theatre was a cinema are Swensen’s restaurant and Publix supermarket (before it moves to the new Riviera Plaza).
I remember the Plaza once included Riviera Photo (I think it was called), a photography shop where University of Miami film students had their Super 8mm film cartridges processed for their introduction to film production classes. The store had been there for decades, then closed sometime in the 90’s due perhaps to the rise of digital cameras, and by that time the nice older couple who owned it may have wished to retire.
If the Riviera Plaza is torn down I may miss it, even though it hasn’t been a regular part of my life in many years.
My final film here, was “Poltergeist III” in 1988. I wonder where the fifth theater was…
The balcony was split into two theaters, like the main auditorium. Awful.
Five screens on May 23rd, 1986. Grand opening ad posted.
This theatre and the Westchester Cinema reopened as Twin cinemas on October 9th, 1974. Grand opening ad posted.
Grand opening ads:
Riviera theatre opening 1 Thu, Feb 16, 1956 – 79 · The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) · Newspapers.com
and
click to zoom in.
I have created a Cinema Treasures page for the first theatre in the area to be named Riviera, which was briefly open in the mid-1920’s just south of this Riviera, before becoming part of the Holsum bakery.
I attended a live performance of the play “The Nether” here on January 30th, 2016.
There is one auditorium and another space used as a dance studio. I asked a person whom I was told was one of the owners and she said that “only the pit” from one of the original Riviera Cinema auditoriums was used which was then otherwise “completely redone” to create the Area Stage Company auditorium. … The staircase that goes left and right from the doorway to the auditorium down to the seating felt familiar to me but nothing else was recognizable.
Here is what their auditorium looks like.
The place is not in the business of exhibiting films though some digital projection was an element in the live performance I saw. (Also as I mentioned in my previous post I had seen a documentary there when an organization rented the auditorium for one evening some years ago.) A tech booth is next to the doorway/staircase (not where a projection booth would traditionally be in a cinema) with a digital projector suspended near the ceiling above the seats.
What had been the Riviera Cinema rear/side exit into the breezeway is actually now a rear exit of the Aleren women’s fashion store which occupies the former lobby of the cinema.
The entrance to the Area Stage Company is just beyond this former rear exit of the cinema at the end of the breezeway. There’s a small office building-type lobby with an elevator, staircase and menu board for offices upstairs (some for businesses unrelated to the stage company), with the doors to the stage company lobby at the back of the office building-type lobby.
On my way home I looked through the front doors of the Aleren women’s fashion store which had been the front doors to the Riviera Cinema. I could recognize the shape of the ceiling from the Riviera Cinema lobby where the guy I mentioned in my previous post had created his murals. The register in the center of Aleren is approximately where the Riviera’s concession stand had been.
Ripshin: Yes I had seen your comment that you had lived in San Remo, which is why I thought to mention I had lived two blocks behind the Riviera (in Chateau Riviera actually, next to San Remo, from 1991-98) in my original post. :) Both buildings are still there but I believe San Remo “went condo” a few years ago while Chateau is still apartments.
Yes, the current Google Streetviews are dated May 2015, and show the women’s store in what was the lobby, as David mentioned above.
David, I was in the San Remo Apartments a few blocks behind the theater, from ‘83 – '85. Make sure that you read ALL of the comments – some are hidden.
The furniture showroom is apparently gone. Here is the web site of the Area Stage Company, the live theater group founded in 1989 which moved into the Riviera Theatre in 2008. They still call the venue the Riviera Theatre and still use the theater’s original address.
I lived two blocks behind the Riviera in the 1990’s and frequented regularly. In the early 90’s there was a box office attendant whom I went to U.M. with who looked a lot like a young Paul McCartney. In the mid-90’s there was another employee, a young artistic guy (possibly named Rene?), who would do murals on the ceiling of the lobby for big anticipated films featuring super heroes like Batman or science fiction characters like Star Trek.
I remember standing in a line that extended down the sidewalk all the way to Spec’s Music for the opening of “Independence Day” (sometimes abbreviated “ID4” in the advertising) right before July 4th, 1996. (After being in business for decades Spec’s closed in maybe 2013 and the Spec’s building was demolished and replaced by a Chase bank. Swensen’s restaurant next to it is still there. CD Solution next to that closed years ago and became part of Crown Wine & Spirits.) Other films I saw at the Riviera included “Forrest Gump”, “Star Trek: First Contact”, “X-Files: Fight The Future”… I may have seen a film there as a last hurrah a day or so before the Riviera closed though I can’t remember the name.
When the AMC Sunset Place 24 opened down the street I heard the Riviera might try to find a niche showing independent and foreign films, but it soon closed.
The front/lobby part became a piano store for maybe two years, and has since been a women’s fashion store. The front doors to the fashion store were the front doors to the theater lobby. The windows that jut out to the left of the front doors between the front doors and the breezeway is where the box office used to be. The triangular marquee still stands out front where the parking lot meets US-1. It and the remaining poster boxes in the breezeway advertise what plays are being performed on the stage that was constructed in the back portion of the theater at the end of the breezeway. (I was in there once to see a film being shown for one screening by an organization concerned about the Congo, but I couldn’t recognize anything that looked left over from the Riviera, as if this new stage/theater may have completely replaced what had been there before, or maybe what was left over was too out of context for me to notice.) The entrance to the stage/theater may be where the side doors to the Riviera lobby were that emptied into the breezeway.
Once, after seeing a film in the then recently opened (and short lived) Mercury Cinema (later Soyka, north of downtown Miami near NE 55th Street and Biscayne Blvd.), I stood chatting with one of the owners after everyone else had left. I mentioned the Riviera and he asked me if I find the seats in his new theater comfortable. I asked why and he said, “I hope you do, cause they’re from the Riviera”.
OK, a portion of the original theater is now the Area Stage Company – Google for the web site. What confuses me, is what part of the original theater do they actually occupy? On the Google Street Map, it is clear that there are now windows on the top section of the old auditorium. Perhaps they lowered the ceiling, and created offices at the top? The Area Stage web site shows a large auditorium, but it seats only 275, but with a large “stage.” I’m guessing that it might be the old balcony, but extended. When I attended films there in the mid-80s, as a UM student – they had separated the balcony into two (?) other theaters. Does anybody know?
Here is an article, with plenty of photos, in Boxoffoce magazine from April 7, 1956:
View link
Nice opening day ad,Mike.
Grand opening ad is at View link
Let’s try that again, View link
Preopening article with picture from the Sunday before
Architects of the Riviera were Peterson & Shuflin, according to the item about the opening in the February 18, 1956, issue of Boxoffice. Loew’s head Joseph R. Vogel (no relation) attended the opening.
Original plans and drawings of a Coral Gables theater designed by Peterson & Shuflin are in the J. Evan Miller Collection of Cinerama Theatre Plans at UCLA. The unnamed house must be the Riviera. I can’t find references to any other theaters designed by Peterson & Shuflin.
Johnnie, this ended up being run by General Cinema, not Loews, for most of its existence.
I attended the U of M starting in 1965. The freshman class orentation was held at Loews Riviera, due to the fact there was
no space at the University that could seat as many people in 1965.
It was always called Loews Riviera, and never just the Riviera. It was a wonderfully run single screen theatre.
1985 photos of the Riviera here and here.
I did not go to this theater while a child (67-73), but certainly did in the early 80s while attending UM. I hated it when they chopped up the theater, though. Best memory…I and a roommate lived in the nearby San Remo Apts, and right before we went to see “2010,” we watched the VHS of “2001”, timed to the minute. We had to run like crazy to make the showing.
Why is the Gables Triple not covered with its own page, or am I missing it?