Hippodrome Theatre
2017 Fresno Street,
Fresno,
CA
93721
2017 Fresno Street,
Fresno,
CA
93721
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The July 13, 1907 issue of The Billboard noted that Fresno’s Barton Opera House was then being operated as part of the Klaw & Erlanger circuit of playhouses.
This reopened as the Hippodrome on December 30th, 1917. Grand opening ad posted.
Eugene Mathewson was actually involved in two remodeling jobs at this theater. The 1914 work on the Theater Fresno included new dressing rooms, fire escapes, a heating and ventilation system, and fireproofing. This project cost $20,000.
Mathewson was also the architect of the 1917 remodeling for the Hippodrome circuit, though on this job he was joined by San Francisco architects Weeks & Day, acting as consultants, as reported in the September issue of The Architect & Engineer of California.
The major remodeling of this theater was done in 1914. Southwest Contractor & Manufacturer of July 11 reported that Eugene Mathewson was the architect for a major remodeling of the Fresno Theatre. Mathewson would later serve as architect for the T&D circuit’s State Theater, which replaced the Barton/Fresno/Hippodrome in 1928.
The Fresno Bee article CSWalczak linked to is no longer there, but this might be it, moved to the paper’s Historical Perspectives weblog. It says that construction of the Barton Opera House began in 1889, and the house opened on September 29, 1890.
The portion of the building fronting on Fulton Street, which had housed the armory, was demolished and replaced by an office block in 1914-1915, and the theater was renamed Theater Fresno. At some point between 1914 and 1917 the theater portion of the building was remodeled.
A book published in 1919, History of Fresno County, California, by Paul E. Vandor, says that the theater was leased to the Hippodrome company and converted to a vaudeville house in 1917.
The design of the Barton Opera House is attributed to Charles K. Kirby, Sr. and Charles K. Kirby, Jr. by A guide to Historic Architecture in Fresno. No clue yet to the architect of the remodeling in the 1910s.
Comparing the pictures of the Barton Opera House and the postcard view of the Hippodrome, it is difficult to believe that they were the same building, but apparently was so.
There is an article about the Barton Opera House here: View link and an archival photo of it here: View link
From the 1920s a postcard view of the Hippodrome Theatre in Fresno.
Here is a July 1923 item that was in the Fresno Bee:
Adolph Ramish of the West Coast Theater Company, Inc., a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures Corporation, announced in Los Angeles to-day that he expects to close a lease on the Hippodrome Theater property in Fresno within a week or ten days. The deal, which Ramish says is virtually closed, will give the West Coast Company a lease which is to be followed by the expenditure of a large sum in remodeling and refitting the theater, converting it into a modern, attractive theater.
Following the announcement from Bakersfield that the Hippodrome in Fresno had been purchased came the statement from Ramish that the deal only contemplates a lease, not a sale of the property. The West Coast Theater Company now has control of 210 theaters on the Pacific Coast, its operations including the California Theater in Bakersfield, Loew’s Warfield in San Francisco, Loew’s State in Los Angeles, Tivoli in San Francisco, T & D Theaters in Oakland and Berkeley, and formerly affiliated theaters in Sacramento, Stockton and Watsonville.