Berkeley Group Makes Last-Ditch Appeal To Stop Demolition Of Historic Theater

CBS Bay Area

April 23, 2025

On Tuesday evening, a group of Berkeley residents went before the City Council in a last-ditch effort to prevent the demolition of a historic downtown theatre.

It's part of the ongoing push to build more housing, which the opponents say has all but stalled in the city.

The United Artists Theater in Berkeley opened to great fanfare in 1932, owned by the movie studio created by silent film stars Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. It was built in the opulent art deco style of the time, and the UA was considered the most luxurious of all the city's cinema palaces. Decades later, it would be partitioned off into a multiplex, but Rose Ellis remembers that, even then, it retained its splendor.

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