Guild Theatre
949 El Camino Real,
Menlo Park,
CA
94025
949 El Camino Real,
Menlo Park,
CA
94025
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Guild Theatre (Official)
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Landmark Theatres (USA), West Side Theaters Inc.
Architects: Alexander Aimwell Cantin
Functions: Concerts, Live Music Venue
Styles: Streamline Moderne
Previous Names: Menlo Theatre
Nearby Theaters
News About This Theater
- Nov 21, 2007 — Plans to purchase and restore the Park Theater fall through
Built as the Menlo Theatre in 1926 it opened on May 6, 1926 with Mary Carr in “King of the Turf”. It was equipped with an organ (make unknown). It is a short drive north of the Stanford Shopping Center and nestled right next to downtown Menlo Park. Originally built as a burlesque house and converted to exhibit movies in the 1940’s. It was taken over by the West Side Theaters Inc. chain and renamed Guild Theatre on March 30, 1948 with Celia Johnson in “This Happy Breed”. It is the oldest standing theatre on the San Francisco Peninsula, featuring two giant golden wings on either side of its gloriously large screen. Operated by Landmark Theatres since 1989, the Guild Theatre featured the finest in independent film and foreign language cinema. It was closed as a movie theatre on September 26, 2019.
Following renovations it reopened as a live music venue on February 18, 2022. It has a capacity for 600 persons.
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Michael
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Recent comments (view all 15 comments)
A 2011 photo can be seen here.
The July 5, 1927, issue of The Film Daily listed the New Menlo Theatre, Menlo Park, California, as a new theater. A few weeks later, the August 25 issue announced that the New Menlo Theatre had been sold to A. Blanco of San Francisco.
Theatres of the San Francisco Peninsula, by Gary Lee Parks and Jack Tillmany, says that the Menlo Theatre was originally opened in 1923 and later rebuilt as the New Menlo Theatre.
The January 5, 1943, issue of The Film Daily ran an item about the partial demolition of the Menlo Theatre and its rebuilding as the Guild, necessitated by the widening of El Camino Real:
Harvey Amusement had taken over the Menlo Theatre in 1936, as reported in the May 6 issue of The Film Daily.Interesting story in today’s SF Chronicle about a woman on a mission to save the Guild preemptively. The theater is still open w/Landmark running it on a month to month lease but “just in case"…. I believe this is the last or one of the last single screen theaters between San Francisco and San Jose along or just off of El Camino Real, the 50 mile main drag of the Peninsula.
Guild
An evening screening tonight will be the last for the Guild. The building has been sold to three investors — Drew Dunlevie, Pete Briger and Thomas Layton, all Peninsula residents — who plan to demolish the theater and rebuild it as a music hall, ending the movie house’s 93-year run in Menlo Park. Details here:
Guild Closing
The building was demolished as of 2020.
The December 27, 1924 issue of Moving Picture World said that architect Birge M. Clark was drawing plans for a 500-seat movie theater to be built at Menlo Park. I don’t know that this project was in fact the Menlo Theatre, but it might have been. It isn’t listed in the guide to Clark’s architectural records and personal papers, which are held by the Stanford University Library, but those records are incomplete. The papers do include material, including a façade drawing, relating to the Varsity Theatre in Palo Alto, which was designed by Reid Brothers in 1927. It’s possible that Clark, who was local, acted as a supervising architect for that project.
Opened as Menlo on May 6th, 1926. Grand opening ad posted.
Reopened as Guild on March 30th, 1948.
Guild Theatre opening 29 Mar 1948, Mon The Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto, California) Newspapers.com
Closed as a movie theater on December 16, 1997.
50sSNIPES…The Guild closed as a film theater Sept 26, 2019. See above link to the article I posted about the closing.