on the cover / By Bob Doran

Tale of Two Theaters

They were the best of venues, then they were the worst. Now they’re coming back.

(March 26, 2009)  They stand tall, proudly displaying their respective city names with art deco marquees. Most theaters like them have fallen by the wayside, demolished to make way for more lucrative businesses, but the Eureka, the Arcata and the Fortuna, all built during the golden age of movie palaces, each with its own complex history of survival — these three persevered.

The first weekend in April, after being closed for seven years, the Arcata will be reborn as the Arcata Theatre Lounge, a 21st century amalgam of movie house, music venue, restaurant and bar.

GALLERY >

The Fortuna, now a multiplex that boasts “state-of-the-art high definition digital projection and sound,” will be showing movies that weekend on a half dozen screens including at least one, Monsters vs. Aliens, projected in 3-D.

The Eureka, now run as the nonprofit Eureka Concert and Film Center, is sporting a newly refurbished marquee. These days the “shabby but useable” theater mostly serves as an occasional concert venue. Dark Star Orchestra, one of America’s top Grateful Dead tribute bands, is playing there in April; it will likely use the movie screen for its light show.

The Arcata Theater was completed in 1938, around the same time as the Fortuna. The larger Eureka opened the following year, which makes 2009 its 70th anniversary. The three theaters followed very different paths, but share a common history. All were built and operated by the small town movie house magnate George Mann, founder of the Redwood Theaters chain. All three were designed by the same architect, William B. Davis.

“It’s the biggest movie theater between San Francisco and Portland,” said Wendy Petty, president of the Eureka Theater’s board of directors. “And it was when it was built, which is amazing for 1939, to build something this big, this optimistic right before the war. We were hardly out of the Depression.”

In those days large, single-screen movie theaters were not unusual. As the 20th century drew to a close, they were becoming a thing of the past. The Fortuna survived by reopening in 2000 as a multiplex. The Eureka and Arcata have followed a different path. After long periods of dormancy, both are now making anachronistic attempts to reemerge with a mission that resembles the theaters’ original design: large, stately, all-encompassing halls for community-wide entertainment. They’re both set to preserve and reinvigorate beautiful old buildings that were once at the center of life in their towns. But though the architecture and history of the two theaters may look similar, their financial circumstances, business models and visions for the future make them very different projects indeed.

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