Greetings family, friends and neighbors! Niles wasn't the only village in Washington Township that featured a silent movie house in the 1920's. Today's rambling is about Irvington's own Leal Theatre.....Bill
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Nostalgic Ramblings
IRVINGTON’S LEAL THEATRE
Washington Blvd. has been the location of historical, educational, religious, and commercial sites from it’s earliest days as a well worn pathway between Mission San Jose and Five Corners with access to the boat landings on San Francisco Bay. By the 1920’s Irvington had become a busy village supporting the needs of a growing population including several popular recreational options. Maple Hall near the railroad depot offered roller skating on it’s wooden floor while across Washington Blvd. the sound of the player piano could be heard above the rumble of the occasional passing auto from the newly constructed silent movie theatre. In 1924 Frank Leal built the $25,000 two story reinforced concrete and frame hall featuring a decorative brick and tile facade with money made from operating a grocery business in Irvington and by taking on a partner, P.C. Hansen, for the project. The upper floor of the theatre was occupied by Leal and Hansen who operated several additional businesses through the years including selling grain and feed in town and dealing in retail lumber. Meanwhile downstairs in the auditorium Leal family members and several local employees ran the movie theatre. Mary Freitas played the organ and operated the player piano until the end of the silent film era and during the transition to “talkies”, Anna Perry handled ushering duties in the darkened hall, and various cousins took turns working the ticket booth facing Washington Blvd. Except for the Niles Theatre, local movie goers in the mid-1920’s only other movie options were to make the drive to Hayward to the “State” and “Hayward” theaters, to Oakland to the newly constructed Grand Lake Theater, or travel to San Jose fifteen miles south. The seven hundred seat “Center” Theatre opened in Centerville in 1946 while Irvington’s theatre continued to provide family entertainment until the mid1950’s. Except for the small tile “Leal Theatre” sign above the second story windows , theres no evidence that the nearly 100 year old aging nondescript concrete building, now subdivided into a partially vacant small shops and offices across busy Washington Blvd. from the Safeway Shopping Center was once Irvington’s thriving movie house and one of the forerunners of today’s digital multiplex cinemas. -Bill
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