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Overview

This 1,000-seat, Mission Style venue opened in 1908, and was built for the Allen Stock Company. Previously, the Stock Company had staged performances at the Pavilion Opera House in Red Bluff, CA.

Building History

The Opera House operated from 1908 until 1927, when a fire damaged the building. Local investors lacked the resources to refurbish it, and the owner of many Northern CA theatres, T & D, Jr., Enterprises, bought the venue in 1928. They completely remodeled it from its original Mission Style appearance into a Art Deco-influenced exterior. T and D renamed it the "State Theatre" at this time.

In 1944, another fire occurred, requiring another renovation. The State Theatre opened again on 05/24/1946. It contained 1,160 seats and had a 40 x 16-foot stage. Its exterior was greatly simplified.

Building Notes

On 01/23/1917, the vaudeville management firm of Trede and Stoll arranged for a special "hippodrome" vaudeville performance to happen at the Red Bluff Opera House. This event enabled Red Bluff's citizens to view a slate of vaudeville performers that usually only played large city theatres. An article in the Red Bluff Daily News said of the upcoming performance: "This is the vaudeville that tours the big Ackerman-Harris circuit which plays such cities as Butte, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Denver and Kansas City. Managers Trede & Stoll have made it possible for local theater-goers to enjoy its first class, big-city brand of entertainment through negotiations recently closed with the Kellie-Burns Association of Seattle, who are the Northwestern representatives for Ackerman & Harris and the Western Vaudeville Managers' Association of Chicago." (See "Big Hippodrome Vaudeville Show Will Play Here," Red Bluff Daily News, vol. XXXIII, no. 64, 01/17/1917, p. 3.) The use of the word "hippodrome" vaudeville suggested the large scale of the venues played by the Ackerman and Harris performers.

Alteration

Fires occurred at the Red Bluff Opera House in 1927 and 1946, requiring reconstruction.

The State Theatre was divided into separate screening rooms at some point, but these walls were removed in a 2008 renovation that uncovered auditorium murals painted c. 1946. According to a respondent to the Cinema Treasures.org web site, the murals were identical to those in the Bal Theatre in San Leandro, CA, that also opened in 1946. (See Cinema Treasures.org, "State Theatre," accessed 10/09/2018.)

PCAD id: 22444