The Lobero Theatre is an historic building in Santa Barbara, California. The theater was originally built as an opera house, in a refurbished adobe school building, by Italian immigrant José Lobero in 1873.[1] Located downtown at the corner of Anacapa and Canon Perdido streets, the Lobero Theatre is registered as a California Historical Landmark.[2]
The Lobero was founded in 1873. By the early 1920s, the old opera house was becoming dilapidated and was rebuilt as a theater, to Spanish Colonial Revival style designs by architects George Washington Smith and Lutah Maria Riggs. The client was the Drama Branch of the Community Arts Association. The Lobero Theater opened in August 1924, during a period in which civic groups in Santa Barbara were beginning to unify the town's architectural look around a Spanish Colonial style.[3]
The theatre continues to host arts and cultural events on 250 or more days per year. Because of its live acoustics and relatively small size it is particularly suited to chamber music. The Music Academy of the West holds many of its summer concerts in the Lobero.
^Conard, Rebecca, Christopher H. Nelson, and Mary Louise Days. 1986. Santa Barbara: a guide to El Pueblo Viejo. Santa Barbara, Calif: Capra Press, p.122.
^"Lobero Theatre". Office of Historic Preservation, California State Parks. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
^Tompkins, Walker A. Santa Barbara, Past and Present. Tecolote Books, Santa Barbara, 1975. p. 94-5
