Nile Theatre

The Bakersfield Opera House on 19th Street in downtown Bakersfield opened in 1906 as a venue for plays, movies, vaudeville acts, and operas. It was renamed the Nile in 1924. It was remodeled in 1927. It was demolished to its exterior walls and rebuilt using the design of S. Charles Lee in 1938. It was split into two auditoriums in 1976. It was closed in 1994. After talk of it coming back as a performance center, the home of a local theatre troupe or just leveling it and replacing it with a parking lot, it was pretty much gutted, remodeled and reopened as the Nile Bar & Grill in 2006 which closed in the early 2020s. Resurrection Church utilized the space for services and events until Fox Theater Foundation bought it in October 2023, restored it as a theater and reopened it in May 2024.

Bakersfield, Kern County
Photographer: John Bare