Teatro Fox Delicias - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Teatro Fox Delicias is a historic building in the city of Ponce

Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...

, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

. Inaugurated in 1931, it originally housed a movie house until 1980, then a shopping mall until 1998, and today it is reconfigured to be used as a hotel. Its architecture is Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

Location

The historic structure is located across the historic Plaza Las Delicias

Plaza Las Delicias

Plaza Las Delicias is the main plaza in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico. The square is notable for its fountains and for the various monuments it contains. The historic Parque de Bombas and Ponce Cathedral buildings are located within Plaza Las Delicias. Plaza Las Delicias is actually composed of...

in the heart of the Ponce Historic Zone

Ponce Historic Zone

The Ponce Historic Zone is a historic district in downtown Ponce, Puerto Rico with construction that dates to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The zone was originally designated in 1962, and then it only included the center core of the city, but it has since been expanded to...

. Its location just north of Plaza Las Delicias makes it part of barrio Segundo

Segundo (Ponce)

Segundo is one of the 31 barrios of the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Primero, Tercero, Cuarto, Quinto, and Sexto, Segundo is one the municipality's six core urban barrios.-Location:...

Design

The building was designed by Francisco Porrata-Doria, who also designed Hotel Melia, Banco de Ponce

Banco de Ponce (building)

The Banco de Ponce building, a historic building in Ponce, Puerto Rico, was the first and main office of Banco de Ponce until the company merged with Banco Popular in 1990. Though its headquarters had moved to a presumptous building in Hato Rey's Milla de Oro by then, Banco de Ponce continued to...

and many other structures in Puerto Rico. The building bears an Art Deco architectural structure with an impressive multi-level front facade.

Theater

The theater had its origins in the late 1920s when Pedro Juan Serralles

Juan Serralles

Juan Serrallés Colón was the founder of Hacienda Mercedita in Ponce, Puerto Rico and what was to become Destileria Serralles, producers of "Don Q", a world renowned brand of Puerto Rican rum.-Early years:...

purchased a piece of land in the center of the city to build the first movie theater

Movie theater

A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....

in Ponce. The structure was completed in 1931. The owners contracted with Twentieth Century Fox for showing the movies. Given the movie contract and the location of the theater, it was named Teatro Fox Delicias. It closed its doors as a movie theater in 1980.

Mall

After serving Ponce moviegoers for some five decades, the building was sold to the Ruberté family

Eduardo Ruberté Bisó

Eduardo Ruberté Bisó was a Puerto Rican politician and Mayor of Ponce, Puerto Rico from 1964 to 1968.Ruberté Bisó is best remembered for the inauguration of the new city cemetery in the El Yeso sector of the city, near the community of Jaime L. Drew...

. In 1989 the theater was converted into a mall under the design of architect Axel Bonilla. It was named the Fox Delicias Mall. The new mall opened in March, 1991. It had 26 commercial spaces ranging from 300 square feet (27.9 m²) to 1200 square feet (111.5 m²). It also had a cafe-theater. The total space was 30000 square feet (2,787.1 m²). Its president is Eduardo Ruberte Huertas. Its renovation lasted a year and cost $3 million.

Hotel

In 2004 the building started conversion into a hotel. Today the historic building has been reconfigured for use as a hotel. The boutique hotel has 30 rooms. The new hotel opened in 2004.

External links

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