Biola Theatre
G Street,
Biola,
CA
93606
G Street,
Biola,
CA
93606
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In 1948, Mike Esponde left the Mendota cafe he had operated for 16 years and moved to Biola, where he built the Biola Theatre. Motion Picture Herald reported that it held 400 seats. The Biola Theatre had opened by January 1, 1949, when it was included in the Fresno Bee’s roundup of valley theaters.
Esponde died unexpectedly in May 1951. Months later, Carter Ashley and Bradley Fish signed a 10-year lease on the Biola Theatre with his widow.
In March 1954, Ashley closed the Biola “because of slow business,” according to the Herald, but the theatre advertised in the 1959 Fresno Central High School yearbook, listing its address as G Street in Biola.
The theatre, including a second-floor apartment with a private entrance, was listed for sale in a Fresno Bee classified advertisement in December 1965.
Contributed by
Michael Kilgore
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Recent comments (view all 1 comments)
I’m pretty sure that the Biola Theatre was at 12553 G Street. this page from the real estate site Compass shows a rather theatrical façade on a building of 5985 square feet, built in 1948. The property is not on the market. Google street view shows one storefront occupied by an AA facility, but there’s no indication of what might be in the remainder of the building, which nevertheless appears to be in fairly good shape.
A tantalizing obsolete web page at an estate sale site lists items being sold at auction from “…an old movie theater crammed full of goodies, Antiques, Advertising, Classic autos, and more. Items stored away for decades.” The site was in Biola, California, so it had to be this theater. The theater must have served as storage for some dealer or collector who is no longer active. The auction page is undated, and no longer displays the theater’s address, but I’m pretty sure this is it.
One more bit I came across is that the Biola Theatre was designed by the Fresno consulting engineering firm of Johnson & Moore, who also designed the Azteca Theatre in Fresno. Designer J. C. Johnson was an English-born architect who did not have credentials to practice in the United States, and thus partnered with licensed engineer Moore.