Cascade Theatre (1935), Redding
A Streamline Moderne jewel on Market Street, the Cascade brought first-run cinema and live performance to the gateway city of Northern California.
At a glance
The Cascade Theatre stands on Market Street in Redding, California, as one of the best-preserved Art Deco performing-arts venues in the northern reaches of the state. Built in 1935 at the intersection of highway and rail commerce, the Cascade served Shasta County audiences as a first-run movie palace for decades before falling into disuse. A sustained restoration campaign, completed in the early 2000s, returned the theater to the repertoire of the city’s cultural life and placed it on the National Register of Historic Places.
Key facts
- Address: 1731 Market Street, Redding, CA 96001
- Built: 1935
- Style: Streamline Moderne (Art Deco)
- NRHP: Listed on the National Register of Historic Places
- Current use: Live performance venue and cinema (Cascade Theatre Foundation)
- County: Shasta County, California
- Coordinates: 40.5838° N, -122.3892° W (Google Maps)
History
Redding in 1935 stood at a crossroads — literally and economically. The city occupied the point where the Southern Pacific Railroad’s main line from San Francisco met the Shasta Route north toward Oregon, and where US 99W linked the Sacramento Valley to the Pacific Northwest. That junction status translated into steady commercial growth even as the Depression tightened its grip on the rest of the country. The construction of Shasta Dam, which broke ground three years later in 1938, would bring a further influx of federal workers and contractors, but the Cascade opened anticipating the prosperity that the dam would confirm.
For four decades the theater functioned as Redding’s primary destination for Hollywood first-runs. When the multiplex era of the 1970s drew audiences to suburban screens, the Cascade entered a long decline. By the 1990s the building sat vacant and at risk, its Art Deco facade weathering quietly on a stretch of Market Street that still carried commercial traffic but fewer pedestrians. Community advocates and city officials eventually assembled a restoration fund; the project stabilized the structure and upgraded the stage for live performance, and the Cascade reopened as a full-service venue in the early 2000s.
What you see
The Cascade’s facade belongs to the Streamline Moderne phase of Art Deco — the idiom that emerged in American commercial architecture around 1933, trading the vertical ornamental towers of Zigzag Moderne for horizontal emphasis, smooth curves, and a streamlined machine aesthetic. The vertical marquee sign carries the theater’s name in the stacked letterform that moviegoers across the country would have recognized as the signal of a first-run house. Relief panels flank the entrance, providing geometric ornament without the elaborate figurative carving of the earlier Deco style.
Inside, the restored auditorium preserves the proportions of the original 1935 interior: a single-rake orchestra with clear sightlines, a proscenium stage deep enough for touring productions, and the acoustic geometry that a purpose-built performance hall provides. The restoration team retained original plasterwork where intact and reproduced it where damaged, maintaining visual continuity between the 1935 fabric and the modern infrastructure beneath it.
Practical information
- Events calendar: Check the Cascade Theatre Foundation website for current programming — concerts, theater, dance, film screenings, and community events.
- Box office: Tickets available online and at the venue on event days.
- Season: Year-round programming, with denser scheduling in the fall and winter months.
- Climate: Redding summers are hot (frequently above 100°F / 38°C); the air-conditioned interior provides welcome relief during outdoor festival season.
- Parking: Street parking on Market Street and surrounding blocks; city parking structure within walking distance.
Getting there
Redding Municipal Airport (RDD) sits approximately 7 miles southeast of downtown, with connecting flights through San Francisco International (SFO) and other California hubs. Amtrak’s Coast Starlight serves Redding station on its Oakland-to-Seattle corridor, connecting northward to Klamath Falls, Portland, and Seattle, and south toward Sacramento and the Bay Area. By road, Interstate 5 bisects Redding; take the Central Redding exit and follow Market Street east. US 299 offers a slower but scenic approach from the coast (Arcata, Eureka) to the west and the high-desert interior (Alturas, the Modoc Plateau) to the east.
Nearby
- Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay — Santiago Calatrava’s 2004 pedestrian bridge across the Sacramento River, one of the largest sundials in the world, half a mile west of the Cascade.
- Shasta State Historic Park — the ruins of the original 1849 gold-rush town of Shasta, 8 miles west on SR-299, preserved by the California State Parks system.
- Lassen Volcanic National Park — active volcanic terrain 50 miles east via SR-44; the park’s hydrothermal features and cinder cones form the southernmost expression of the Cascade Range that gives the theater its name.
- Fox Theatre, Visalia CA — another Fox West Coast Theatres Art Deco house of 1930 in the San Joaquin Valley, 140 miles south, offering a complementary perspective on California theater design of the same era.
Sources
- National Register of Historic Places nomination, Cascade Theatre, Shasta County, California.
- City of Redding — Cascade Theatre Foundation public records and venue documentation.
- California Office of Historic Preservation, historic property inventory.
- Wikimedia Commons — Cascade Theater 1935 – Redding, CA.JPG, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 (User: Publichall).
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