History

The Mayan Revival style in American architecture emerged in the late nineteenth century and reached its fullest expression in the 1920s and early 1930s, when Mayan archaeology was generating popular interest through publications, expeditions, and exhibitions. For theatre architecture in particular, the Mayan and Egyptian Revival styles offered an alternative to the Spanish Colonial Revival and Italian Baroque vocabularies that dominated American cinema design — they were dramatic, exotic, and richly ornamental in ways that promised a total environment of escapism for audiences.

Denver in 1930 was a growing regional city with a well-developed theatre circuit. The South Broadway corridor had become a commercial entertainment strip by the late 1920s, and the Mayan Theatre was conceived as a neighbourhood cinema in that context rather than a downtown palace. Its modest size — compared to the great 3,000-seat downtown movie palaces — suited the audience base of a residential and commercial neighbourhood. The facade’s ornamental programme announced the theatre’s character to the street in unmistakable terms: the masks and serpents of the polychrome terracotta skin made the building instantly identifiable and offered a concentrated visual experience of the Mayan Revival vocabulary even from a moving vehicle.

The theatre survived the mid-century conversion wave that destroyed or subdivided hundreds of American cinemas. The building’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places has helped to stabilise its status. Today it operates as an independently owned cinema, screening art-house and independent films in a context that suits its architecture.