The ceiling shows the June sky over the Southwest, stars astronomically correct, clouds drifting on cue - and it has been doing it since Hoover was president. The Plaza Theatre at 125 Pioneer Plaza in downtown El Paso opened on September 12, 1930 with the film Follow Thru before a capacity crowd of 2,410, advertised as the largest theatre of its kind between Dallas and Los Angeles. Architect W. Scott Dunne's Spanish Colonial Revival house was an atmospheric palace in the full 1920s sense - the auditorium plays as a Spanish courtyard under an artificial evening sky - and the building was the first public theatre in the United States with air conditioning, its patio lobby looking onto a 30-foot mural of a Spanish town. The survival story is El Paso's own: the final reel ran in May 1974, demolition loomed, and a community campaign led by the El Paso Community Foundation - designated an official Save America's Treasures project in 2000 - assembled the nearly 38-million-dollar public-private restoration that reopened the house on March 17, 2006 with sold-out runs of Riverdance. The restored complex centers on the 2,050-seat Kendall Kidd Performance Hall with a ten-story stage house sized for touring Broadway, plus the 200-seat Philanthropy Theatre in the adjoining Centre Annex and the rooftop Alcantar Sky Garden. The details reward attention: mosaic-tiled floors, decorative metal railings, antique furnishings bought back piece by piece, and a Mighty Wurlitzer organ - one of only six of its model ever built - with 1,071 pipes simulating fifteen instruments. The programming runs Broadway tours, concerts, comedians and the annual Plaza Classic Film Festival - billed as the world's largest classic film festival - with the theatre managed by El Paso Live a short walk from the convention center. Upgraded to national significance on the National Register in 2004, the Plaza stands as one of the last intact atmospheric palaces in America - a 1930 illusion of a Spanish evening, still working nightly on the border.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 125 Pioneer Plaza, El Paso, TX, United States, 79901

Website: https://elpasolive.com/venues/plaza-theatre

Capacity: 2050

Opening Date: 12/09/1930

Accessible