On a downtown street lined with historic one and two-story buildings in downtown Silver City, a building is up for sale that has provided endless hours of entertainment to three generations of residents.
“It’s really in very good shape,” says Levi Hermman of the Gila Theater, which was first opened in 1948 when the top movies were the Red River starring John Wayne, Paleface starring Bob Hope, and Easter Parade starring Fred Astaire.
“But although we have kept it up through the years, we decided it would just be easier to sell it, especially to someone who wants to keep it going as a theater,” continues Hermann, who owns the building.
Measuring around 12,600 square feet, the Gila Theater at 415 N. Bullard Street was the first movie house of its kind in the area to feature a built-in candy concession, and features office space on the second floor and adjacent retail space.
“We’ve had quite a few inquiries,” says Hermann of a building that has had a series of owners through the decades and underwent an extensive renovation in 2007. “But so far, nothing has been finalized.”
With an asking price of $419,000, the Gila Theater should be seen as something of a steal. But such properties, notes Ken Stein, are not always that easy to sell.
“They really are special kinds of properties,” remarks Stein, the president of the Forest Hill, Maryland-based League of Historic American Theaters.
“Potential buyers are always confronted with the challenge of whether they want to keep these places open as theaters, or repurpose them for some other kind of use,” continues Stein.
While the 19th century movie palaces of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities originally served as opera houses, before giving themselves over to vaudeville and finally becoming strictly movie theaters by the 1920s, the movie houses of small-town America followed a slightly different trajectory.
“Unlike the grand palaces, which are really beautiful places that have been updated in recent years and still either show movies or feature Broadway plays, the movie houses in smaller towns have had a tougher time of it,” says Stein.
That’s not just because the small towns in which the movie houses are located have oftentimes lost populations and been economically challenged themselves, but because such venues have frequently had only one screen.
“That makes it harder to sell,” agrees Phyllis Bechtold, a realtor with Montana Real Estate who is representing the Roxy Theater, an Art Deco-designed two-story building in Choteau, Montana.
Opened in the summer of 1946 and measuring around 4,800 square feet, the Roxy has been a mainstay in the northwestern Montana city of around 1,700 people ever since.
“It’s one of our main social events,” Bechtold says of the movies that are still shown at the Roxy, located at 25 Main Street. “What happens to this movie house is important to the entire town.”
In recent years, the Roxy Theater has endured by also hosting live theater. A stage was built to the front of the movie screen, providing enough space for performances, while the old-fashioned 35-millimeter project room has been upgraded to allow for digital technology.
But such conversions, making movie houses more marketable as properties, come with their own challenges. “The projection equipment used for the digital screening of a movie has a different throw and angle, as well as a different lighting quality,” notes Stein.
Some theaters, such as the grand Tampa Theater in downtown Tampa, built in 1926, spent around $150,000 switching over to digital. “They set up a series of mirrors to deal with the problem of the digital being too far away and at the wrong angle,” reports Stein.
A nearly equal challenge has come with the iconic neon marquees that decorate the fronts of the movie houses and are treasured by movie house fans.
“That’s not going anywhere,” says Bechtold when asked about the Roxy Theater’s classical multi-color marquee with the word “Roxy” spelled out in script form.
In fact, while other theaters currently listed for sale around the country, such as the West Theater built in 1941 in Cedartown, Georgia; and the World War II-era Noyo Theater in Willits, California, have seen some interior renovations, their marquees have remained intact, prominent, and always colorful.
“It would be great if everything about the place could remain the same,” says Hermann in speaking of the Silver City’s Gila Theater,” and that includes the marquee.”
In fact, adds Hermann, his ultimate wish is not just finding a buyer for the Gila Theater, but one who “will keep it just as it is, showing movies, so that people can enjoy forever.”
By Garry Boulard
