San Carlino Theatre

Joe Vogel on November 4, 2018 at 10:59 pm

The San Carlino was a fairly old theater. It was listed in the 1914-1915 American Motion Picture Directory. Biographies of opera singer Rosa Ponselle note that she gave some of her earliest public performances at the San Carlino, around 1914, when she was still a teenager. In an interview she described the San Carlino as “… a full-sized theater….nearly a thousand seats, counting the balcony and the boxes. It had a pretty large stage, and there was also an orchestra pit.” It was operated by a Mr. Richard T. Halliwell, who also had smaller theaters in Meriden and Ansonia.

The house had been renamed the Strand by 1915, when the July 10 issue of Motion Picture Newsnoted its recent closing. A notice of an open plumbing contract at the “Carlino” Theatre in New Haven ran in the October 2, 1909 issue of The Metal Worker, Plumber and Steam Fitter, so that might have been when the theater was built, though it might also have been only some repair work or remodeling going on. The house must have been in existence by 1909, though.