The Silco Theater in Silver City first opened in 1923, since then it has had different names, different owners, and been shut down and turned into retail space. In February, it reopened as a movie theater for the first time in 55 years.
The Popcorn is popping, tickets are selling, and movies are playing at the Silco Theater. The project has been a long time coming, Lucy Whitmarsh, Executive Director or the Silver City MainStreet Project, and the project coordinator for the Silco Theater renovation, said discussions to bring a movie theater downtown began in 2005.
“Through doing research we found that if you have an operating theater in your downtown,” Whitmarsh said. “That it brings people into the downtown for other activities, such as going to restaurants, and the shops and enhances the nightlife.”
Whitmarsh said it was important for the Silver City MainStreet Project to restore one of the old theaters.
“With a historic downtown, which we are,” Whitmarsh said. “We have a very strong historic preservation ethic, and it’s actually more cost effective to renovate older building then it is to start over again.”
Fundraising for the project began extensively in 2012, and the project, which cost around $1 million dollars, received funding from a variety of sources including New Mexico MainStreet, the Economic Development department, the Department of Cultural Affairs and many private donations.
Whitmarsh says many in the community helped with the fundraising efforts.
“One of our local artists created this poster,” Whitmarsh said. “And then we were selling them as one of our fundraisers.”
Renovation construction began in 2014, and Whitmarsh says they tried to stay as true as possible to the original theater. She says they mainly went off people’s memories of going to movies and the few photographs they had.
“We had three photos of the interior,” Whitmarsh said. “And one of the exterior. And the one that we most closely tried to replicate was the exterior one, and that was from a renovation that was done in 1940. We did try to do as much of that as we could, and then again from the three interior ones, we tried to replicate as much as we could from the three interior ones also.”
The apron of the stage, and the piano that was used for the old silent movies are original. When they couldn’t perfectly recreate something, they tried to keep the art deco theme of the original theater. Whitmarsh says the goal with the outside marquee was to make it look like it always belonged.
“I was walking down the street after the marquee had been done,” Whitmarsh said. “And it was a couple, a man and a women, and the guy looked up and he said ‘you know I don’t think that was here before,’ and the lady said ‘oh, it’s always been there,’ But this is what we’re trying to create is that, and it wasn’t a big long continuing discussion, but we didn’t want it to look like, ‘oh my god, what did they do,’ We wanted it to be like, oh yeah it’s always been like that.”
Whitmarsh says more than trying to perfectly create the original Silco Theater; they wanted to recreate the old movie-going experience, when going to see a movie was an event.
“What we wanted to do is recreate the theater experience,” Whitmarsh said. ‘To give people a reason to go the theater, and the built environment is certainly contributing to that, and not only that because it is distinctive, people will remember and associate what movie they saw, how they saw it, who they saw it with, and they’ll have more of a memory of what that experience was like.”
Whitmarsh says so far the theater has been an economic driver in Downtown Silver City.
“It been wonderful,” Whitmarsh said. “Everybody is so thrilled about it, and so excited to have a movie theater downtown. The restaurants have been getting more business, which is one of the things that we expected. It’s bringing families downtown, that we hadn’t really seen that much activity of families, so it’s really diversifying the people that are coming downtown.”
Barbra Cragen grew up in Silver City, and was back visiting with her daughter. She says she has vivid memories seeing movies there growing up.
“I always sat in the same seat,” Cragen said. “And I would come from matinees when I was a kid, and when I was older and dating of course we came at night, and it was just the only game in town. It was great.”
Cragen worked at the theater after high school from 1950 to 1952 when tickets were 50 cents for adults, 40 cents for students, and a quarter for kids.
“I worked in the confectionary,” Cragen said. “We sold a box of popcorn for a dime, a bag for a nickel, and we sold cokes and hot dogs, and we had books, and people had to come in there then to get there refreshments to go to the theater, so you saw everyone that was going to the show.”
For showtimes or to buy tickets you can visit thesilco.com.
