Cine Royal

107 Calle Cristo,
San Juan 00907

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Additional Info

Styles: Spanish Colonial

Nearby Theaters

Cine Royal

The Cine Royal was one of three movie houses located in Old San Juan.

Contributed by Gabriel Cuyar

Recent comments (view all 32 comments)

AGRoura
AGRoura on September 17, 2010 at 2:32 pm

I could be wrong, rrstar, is just that the actual buildings don’t look like a theater building was there. My understading is that those buildings predate the 30’s but, again, I could be wrong.

rrstar96
rrstar96 on September 17, 2010 at 3:10 pm

If I remember my mother’s stories correctly, the Tres Banderas was eventually demolished.

MiguelRodriguezDenizard
MiguelRodriguezDenizard on September 20, 2010 at 9:16 pm

Hi AGR and rrstar96. If the site of “Fundacion Nacional para la Cultura Popular” is correct, there was a Teatro Tres Banderas in Old San Juan. The article in the site was written in 2004 and talks about an upcoming play regarding the life of Carlos Gardel. During the article, the authors made a historial reference of the only time Gardel visited Puerto Rico (brought by United Theaters and Rafael Ramos Cobian. His tour around the island started on April 3, 1935 at the Parmount Theater in Santurce and also he performed twice on April 12 in Teatro Tres Banderas at the Old San Juan and in Teatro Victoria in Rio Piedras. Here is the link for the article:

View link

That segment of the article is interesting because they talked about several theaters and their locations in terms of municipalities or sectors in the Metropolitan area. Eventhough the article claims that Teatro Liberty was in Rio Piedras (if that theater was the one who became the Lorraine, then his correct location is Santurce), the same goes with Teatro Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras in the article, Santurce to my best knowledge) and Teatro San Jose (Rio Piedras in the article, Calle Loiza in Condado if I’m not mistaken).

MiguelRodriguezDenizard
MiguelRodriguezDenizard on September 20, 2010 at 10:35 pm

Here is a link of a Website dedicated to Calos Gardel. Beautiful pics of several theaters and I think here is a more accurate account of the theaters and locations:

View link

AGRoura
AGRoura on October 19, 2010 at 4:32 pm

I am guessing, but maybe the same owner of the Tres Banderas built the one in Villa Palmeras after the Old San Juan theatre was demolished. Among the theaters in Villa Palmeras there was the Imperial. One of the two had a beautiful facade, I don’t remember which. In the 60s they played both Spanish and English speaking movies in second run since at the time they were “cines de barrio”, neighborhood houses.

AGRoura
AGRoura on March 16, 2011 at 5:50 pm

I just discovered this website from Puerto Rico. In the section Historia del cine en Puerto Rico they mention the buiding of the first island cinemas including the Tres Banderas.

http://www.Cinemovida.net/

davsot
davsot on March 16, 2011 at 6:37 pm

Ok, one more try. Is it this one?

View link

rrstar96
rrstar96 on August 4, 2011 at 9:46 am

[Reposting] Based on my own memories of Old San Juan as well as my mother’s (she grew up in the city), these were the area theaters:

Royal – San Justo Street, close to the corner with San Francisco Street.

Rialto – corner of San Francisco and Tanca Streets. Ended up as an X-rated theater before closing down and reopening as a Burger King.

Cine Luna – Luna Street (of course).

Roxy – Cruz Street, close to the old Gonzalez Padi­n department store. It was replaced by a Chinese restaurant that later burned down.

Tres Banderas – Recinto Sur Street, across (I think) from the “Dona Fela” parking garage. Demolished.

davsot
davsot on August 4, 2011 at 11:33 am

How come most of them have been demolished?

davsot
davsot on August 7, 2011 at 10:47 am

The photo is on the wall of this page on facebook

http://www.facebook.com/artdecopr

http://www.facebook.com/groups/309865805522/?id=10150746841360523

Ms. Bernier is having an event at Archivo General de Puerto Rico about the PR’s old theaters.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=214813871898998

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