The historic California Theatre is a 1,718 seat auditorium built in 1928 as a vaudeville movie palace. Currently the theatre hosts a wide range of performance types including legitimate theatre, musicals, plays, symphony celebrity headliners, concerts, children theatre, ballet, recitals, fashion shows, corporate seminars, graduation exercises and naturalization ceremonies. It serves a population of 26 million people in a 30-mile radius, which includes 448,000 households with an average annual earning of $40,000 plus. The Theatre has gone through numerous renovations to upgrade both patron comfort and production capabilities.
 
The California Theatre has been voted the best live theatre in Inland Empire in the San Bernardino Sun Newspaper, The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Redlands Daily Facts and The Inland Empire Magazine.

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Mighty Wurlitzer Organ

Music – and history – come to brilliant and melodic life whenever the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ is played in the California Theatre of the Performing Arts in downtown San Bernardino, 562 W. Fourth St. The organ is still played today in silent film programs.

 

The theatre was originally built as a vaudeville house and movie palace in 1928, and the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ still resides its original theater home, the only one in Riverside and San Bernardino counties to do so, and one of the very few in Southern California.