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Building History

The San Francisco architect, Alfred Henry Jacobs (1882-1954).designed the 600-seat Winema Theatre. It opened in 1919.

The facility became a community-owned performing arts center c. 2002, operated by the Scotia Community Service District.

Building Notes

This gable-roofed wood-framed theatre had a rustic, cabin-like quality appropriate to a lumber town. The building resembled a simple, Scandinavian, country church or an antique Swiss chalet. Like a chalet, it had a low-pitched gable roof, a balcony above the main entry. The projecting beamwork and decorative brackets also tied it with Swiss chalets; unlike contemporary chalets, however, the first floor was not coated in plaster.

The front of the Winema Theatre had something of a classical colonnade composed of huge unpeeled logs. These redwood logs supported a projecting central entry porch sheltering the ticket booth and lobby. Classicially-inspired colonnades formed from rustic logs can be found in other West Coast buildings of the 1900s-1910s, such as the Forestry Buildings at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition (1905), Portland, OR, and the somewhat later Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expostion (1909) in Seattle, WA.

A row of gabled dormers lined the roof over the auditorium.

A postcard (#641060) from Eastman's Studio, Susanville CA, showed the theatre c. 1972.

Alteration

There was a renovation in the theatre in the 1960s. At this time, a dance floor was put in place of the front row of cinema seating. (See Cinema Treasures.org, "Winema Theater," accessed 07/31/2018.)

Another alteration in 2002, added new "...seating, lights, sound system, full size movie house screen, and 2000 square foot dance floor." (See Waymarking.com, "Winema Theatre," accessed 07/31/2018.)

PCAD id: 14435