MCA Revives the Northside’s Holiday Theater

The Holiday Theater is getting a new lease on life. A long-term lease, specifically, at below-market rates to support its newest tenant: Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which kicks off its official residency in the historic Northside cinema space with an opening party on Thursday, April 7.

The 400-seat venue on West 32nd Avenue was dubbed The Egyptian when it opened in 1926, reflecting the public’s love for all things Egyptian after the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb. But by 1953, both the zeitgeist and the Northside neighborhood had changed, and the name was changed to Holiday Theater. It was the first in Colorado to run Spanish-language films in the 1960s, and continued to do so through the ’80s, when it closed as a commercial enterprise after becoming a fond cinematic…