History
Construction began with a ground breaking announced in the Las Vegas Review Journal on April 6, 1944. The theater opening on October 10, 1944. It was operated by the Commonwealth Theater Company of Las Vegas, and later the Huntridge Theater Company of Las Vegas. Both companies were headed Thomas Oakey of Las Vegas. The Huntridge Theater Company, which took ownership in 1951, was partially owned by actresses Loretta Young and Irene Dunne. The theater was built on land which had been owned by international business magnate Leigh S. J. Hunt, before he left it to his son Henry Leigh Hunt in 1933. The Huntridge Theater and the surrounding Huntridge subdivision are named after the Hunt family.
The theater is said to have been the first non-segregated theater in Las Vegas.
The theater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
On July 28, 1995, the punk rock group Circle Jerks were to perform at the theater. Several hours before they were to arrive, the roof of the theater collapsed. There were no serious injuries. Lead singer Keith Morris would later comment, "As soon as we got there, we were told that the roof had collapsed and the show was canceled. We didn't have anywhere else to go, so we just set up our equipment in the parking lot and played for the 30 or 40 people who were still there."
While attempting to save the theater, it was operated by the non-profit Friends of the Huntridge Theatre, Inc. which dissolved in 2002.
The Huntridge Theater closed on July 31, 2004, almost 60 years after it opened.
The property is controlled by the Mizrachi family of Las Vegas, which owns a furniture store occupying a part of the property which used to house a bank.
Read more about this topic: Huntridge Theater
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)