On your right, look for a cream-colored stucco theater with a broad arched facade, a tiled Spanish Colonial Revival roofline, and the unmistakable vertical Fox sign rising above the entrance.
This is the Fox Performing Arts Center, opened in nineteen twenty-nine when movie palaces were built to feel a little larger than life. Los Angeles architects Clifford Balch and engineer Floyd E. Stanberry gave Riverside a theater that belonged to the great West Coast chain assembled by Abe and Mike Gore, Adolph Ramish, and Sol Lesser. Then, in nineteen twenty-eight, William Fox bought a controlling interest, tying film production to film distribution in one tidy machine, at least until antitrust rules and Fox’s financial troubles unraveled the arrangement.
What made this place special was not only its style, but its audience. During the nineteen thirties and forties, Hollywood brought unfinished films here to test them on Riverside crowds, believing this city reflected small-town America closely enough to reveal what the nation might think. Most famously, this theater became the first anywhere to screen Gone With the Wind before its release in nineteen thirty-nine.
The building even took on an unexpected wartime role. During the Second World War, manager Roy Hunt let soldiers from nearby bases sleep on the thick carpets in the lobby and auditorium when local beds ran out. In nineteen forty-two, workers also carved out a smaller five-hundred-thirty-six-seat theater called the Lido from the old stage and dressing rooms.
Then came the long fade. By nineteen seventy-eight, Walnut Properties ran Spanish-language films in the main house, while the Lido showed adult movies. If you fancy it, have a glance at the before-and-after image; it captures that remarkable recovery rather well. The city stepped in in two thousand and six, spent thirty-five million dollars on restoration, and reopened the revived theater in January two thousand and ten as the cultural showpiece you see now.
If you want to return another time, public hours are limited, generally from noon to four on Wednesday through Friday.
Few buildings tell Riverside’s story of glamour, decline, and renewal quite so honestly. From the Fox, continue to the Riverside Convention Center, where the city gathers on a larger scale.
