The Piedmont Theatre, located on Piedmont Avenue in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, is Oakland's oldest continuously operating movie theater.

Background

Piedmont Theatrer was opened on 15 September 1917 by musician Dave Rosebrook as a single-screen theater with a

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

organ. In 1934, it underwent a major

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

remodeling by Alexander A. Cantin, during which the balcony was added. The Piedmont Theatre now focuses on independent and foreign cinema. As with the nearby

Grand Lake Theatre The Grand Lake Theatre is a historic movie palace located at 3200 Grand Avenue and Lake Park Avenue in the Grand Lake, Oakland, Grand Lake neighborhood of Oakland, California. History The Grand Lake Theater, designed as a single auditorium theat ...

, its balcony has been converted into two smaller theaters, bringing the total number of screens to three. It underwent further remodeling in 2011. The Piedmont Theatre acts as a venue for multiple

film festivals A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon ...

, including the

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is the oldest Jewish film festival in the world, and currently the largest with a 2016 attendance figure of 40,000 at screenings in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, San Rafael, and Palo Alto. The three-week summe ...

Frameline Film Festival The Frameline Film Festival (aka San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival) (formerly San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival; San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival) began as a storefront event in 1976. The first ...

, and

CAAMFest CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), is presented every March in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States as the nation’s largest showcase for new Asian American and Asia ...

. It has been operated by

Landmark Theatres Landmark Theatres is a movie theatre chain in the United States. It was formerly dedicated to exhibiting and marketing independent film, independent and foreign film, foreign films. Since its founding in 1974, Landmark has grown to 35 Indepe ...

since 1994. A previous establishment called the Piedmont Theatre, located a few blocks south on Piedmont Avenue, was a

nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...

run by Katherine Heber from 1914 to 1917.

References

{{reflist Cinemas and movie theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Oakland, California