Visalia Fox Theatre

History:

The Fox Theatre tells a lot about the community of Visalia. Opened in 1930 in the early days of "talking pictures," the theater was the grand showplace in town for over 40 years. Going to the Fox was an unforgettable experience. It let you leave the streets of Visalia behind to enter the garden court of an East Indian temple resplendent with wall murals, green trees, and of course, the unforgettable twinkling stars above.

The Fox first made headlines in the Visalia Times-Delta when on January 5, 1929, a front page story announced that a grand new theater would be built for Fox West Coast Theaters, the largest chain of motion picture theaters in the country. Fox built hundreds of theaters to promote their films, six of them in California. Movies gained respectability through association with elaborate movie palaces, and the Fox is typical of the "atmospheric" style of theater-designed with elaborate motif so grand that the movie goer could escape from the realities of the Great Depression into romance and fantasy before the feature ever began.

The theater was to be built on the west edge of town, at Main and Encina Streets, and work soon began to raze the garage and small residence that occupied the site. As construction got underway, "talking pictures" debuted in town at the old Visalia Theatre, and the Fox Corporation promised that their grand new theater would be an all-talky movie house. Fox contracted with Western Electric to provide the highest quality sound and much of the projection equipment.