Angelo Civic Theater in San Angelo, TX - Cinema Treasures

The Parkway Theatre and Community Center was opened on September 2, 1949 with Pat O'Brien in “The Boy with Green Hair”. It was operated by Robb & Rowley-United Inc. Soon to be taken over by Rowley United Theatres Inc. This freakish looking ex-cinema is now home to San Angelo’s community dramatists. They took over the former Parkway Theatre in 1980 and remodeled it in 1981.

The façade is long and low, with a tower on the right hand side. The marquee is nothing special, but the tower is bizarre. It is a stubby trapezoid with two poles mounted on the front face. Each pole is surmounted by a spiked metal ball with a very tall spike on top, and braced to the roof by four arched metal sheets.

The playhouse has painted the area over the marquee with a mural of 17th century people in a garden that looks just like the patterned wallpaper that was so popular when I was little.

Contributed by Seth Gaines