Arlington Theatre

The style at full volume — a mission tower on the street, a painted-sky Spanish village inside.

Key facts

Opened May 22, 1931 as the Fox Arlington, on the site of a hotel destroyed in the 1925 earthquake
Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival design by local firm Edwards & Plunkett
"Atmospheric" auditorium built to look like an open-air Spanish village under a painted night sky
Seats about 2,010; flagship venue of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival
The June 29, 1925 earthquake (about magnitude 6.3) forced the city's mandated Spanish-Colonial rebuild

Narration transcript

Look up at the building across the sidewalk from you: the white bell tower, the red-tiled roofline, the deep arch over the entrance. This is the Arlington Theatre, and it's the perfect place to start, because it tells you the big secret of downtown Santa Barbara before we've walked a single block.

Here's that secret. The "old Spanish town" you came to see is mostly younger than your grandparents. On the morning of June 29th, 1925, an earthquake — around magnitude six and a half — leveled most of downtown. And instead of just rebuilding, the city made a decision that was almost unheard of: it would put itself back up as one single look. Spanish Colonial Revival. White walls, red roofs, iron balconies — everywhere, by design. What feels centuries old is really a themed city, built fast, in the late 1920s.

The Arlington is that idea turned all the way up. It opened in 1931, on the rubble of a hotel the quake took, and it's what they called an "atmospheric" theatre. Step inside for a show and you're not in a room at all — you're standing in a make-believe Spanish village at dusk, with house fronts and balconies around you and a ceiling painted like a deep evening sky, stars twinkling overhead. A whole invented town, indoors. Which is a pretty good joke, standing in an invented town, outdoors.

Keep that in your head as we walk: almost everything ahead was chosen. Now, head down State Street, to your right as you face the theatre. A block along, watch for a tall, pale tower rising above everything else — the Granada.