Cine Royal
107 Calle Cristo,
San Juan
00907
107 Calle Cristo,
San Juan
00907
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The Cine Royal was one of three movie houses located in Old San Juan.
Contributed by
Gabriel Cuyar
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Recent comments (view all 32 comments)
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.
If I remember my mother’s stories correctly, the Tres Banderas was eventually demolished.
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).
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
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.
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/
Ok, one more try. Is it this one?
View link
[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.
How come most of them have been demolished?
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