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The El Rey Theater, built in the 1930 was a long-time fixture of downtown Manteca and was popular throughout this part of the Central Valley. It was an elegant example of the Art Deco style, including a large triangular-shaped blade marquee spelling out the theater's name.
The theatre hit the news in 1975, when a fire started, ironically during a screening of "Towering Inferno", and quickly gutted the entire theater. The blackened shell of the theater would stand ignored for twenty two years. Finally, in 1997, brothers Shon and Joe Kelley saw the ruins, and decided to rebuild it; not as a movie theater, but as a new brewery and pub. The Brickyard Oven opened in 1999, after a $2.5 million reconstruction. The exterior of the former theater has been renovated as close to its original appearance as possible, unfortunately without the original marquee. Fortunately, artist Dave Gordon, remembered the old theater when he painted his mural masterpiece, "Manteca Cruise". A good picture of the original theater is on his website (slide #2).
The place made spooky news again in 2003, when on the morning of February 2nd, a fire broke out in the pub’s oven. This time, the sprinkler system worked and an automatic fire alarm system enabled firefighters to quickly extinguish the fire. However, that fire earned the place a listing amongst California’s haunted locations.
So it is not a movie theater anymore, it doesn’t even resemble one anymore, but both cinematour.com and cinematreasures.org found the place and its story good enough to include it on their lists of historic movie theaters.
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