Movie palaces and theater pipe organs were well before my time, but the Warnors Theater is a proud survivor of the golden age of silent movies and vaudeville. Built in an architectural style known as Spanish Colonial Revival, the theater has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978. This episode of California’s Gold originally aired June 26, 2006. The following year, 2007, the Caglia family donated the theater and other parts of the complex to the Warnors Center for the Performing Arts, the nonprofit organization which continues to operate the historic facility.

The Warnors Theatre, a Fresno landmark that opened in 1928, houses a pipe organ that is the only one of its kind in the world still performing inside its original theatre.

After years of neglect, the future of the theatre was in jeopardy until Frank Caglia bought it in 1973 and returned it to its former luster. Huell hears the Caglia’s family story, which intersects with the story of the Warnors Theatre at its opening and is as much a jewel as the theatre itself .

(Click on the linked image below to see the video.)