When Lorna Cruz-Pierce returned to the theater of her childhood at 2119-2123 Germantown Avenue in North Philadelphia this summer there was no use trying to hold back the tears. This was the Teatro Puerto Rico, her grandfather’s theater, where she spent the nights and summers of the 1960s ushering, sweeping, selling candy–a teenage girl doing whatever needed doing. Yet, here was that same theater, a shell of what it once was, but still familiar and brimming with the possibility of returning to glory.

“I got there, I cried. I cannot even tell you the emotions I felt walking back in. I was embarrassed, but ecstatic,” Cruz-Pierce said. “ I wanted to walk around every crevice.”

Here, also, was the irrefutable evidence of the value of historic preservation: Exhibit A in the case for saving the past for future’s sake. Only a year ago, admirers of this century-old theater on Germantown Avenue northeast of Temple’s Main Campus–built 1922 as The Diamond–were fearing the worst. Worn down and on the market, there was word an out-of-state developer was eyeing the property for a demo-and-condo job, the latest casualty on the frontlines of Temple University and Kensington development’s northward advance.

That turned nearby indy rocker Andy Molholt into an activist, teaming up with experienced preservationist Oscar Beisert to successfully nominate the building to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places last November. Later, word came that the developer had walked. Then the even bigger news arrived this summer: Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (Puerto Ricans on the Move, or APM), a community services nonprofit with a long history in the neighborhood, had purchased the former theater to serve as an anchor space in a wider redevelopment plan for the Germantown Avenue corridor. The announcement electrified Molholt, who said experienced preservationists he spoke with called the dramatically rapid change in fortunes extremely rare. “This never happens,” Molholt said.

In August, the plans went public when APM hosted a kickoff event at the theater, offering Cruz-Pierce, Moholt, and anyone else interested a chance to walk its interior one last time before a dramatic conversion, or perhaps reversion, into a treasured community space began. Nilda Ruiz, president and chief executive officer of APM, said she views the theater as a critical anchor property on a four-block stretch of Germantown Avenue currently undergoing a master planning effort. Specifics are yet to be worked out, but streetscaping, affordable housing, and improved commercial and cultural destinations will all play a role, perhaps none more exciting than the theater. “One thing I do know for sure is that I want to bring it back to a performance hall where we can show movies, we can have independent plays, we can maybe preserve the culture,” Ruiz says. “We’ll probably just call it ‘Teatro.’”

A Center of Puerto Rican Life

In a Hidden City article detailing efforts to save and the history of the theater published last year, its time as a touchstone of the Puerto Rican experience in Philadelphia received little more than two paragraphs. Historical records, at least in the English language, are simply not robust. Yet, Cruz-Pierce’s oral history, combined with research performed by Beisert as part of his historic nomination of the building, can fill in the blanks.

After its 1922 opening, the theater spent less than 30 years as an English-language venue before a woman named Josephine Trilla applied in 1950 for a permit to convert it into the “Diamente Theatre,” Spanish for Diamond. A decade later, Felix Sampayo Rodriguez, Cruz-Pierce’s grandfather, purchased it and shortly thereafter restyled it as the “Teatro Puerto Rico.” As Beisert noted, this coincided with the “first great period” of Puerto Rican migration to Philadelphia between 1950 and 1970. “While there were certainly a handful of Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this specific Latino community did not have a large population in the Quaker City until the mid-20th century,” Beisert wrote in his nomination. “After the Second World War, the largely agrarian Puerto Rican economy was industrialized, ultimately leading some Puerto Ricans to migrate to Philadelphia.”

This migration actually began in the late 1940s, Beisert noted, and by a decade later Puerto Ricans were said to have been the largest Latino group in Philadelphia, located predominantly in North Philadelphia. Cruz-Pierce explained that her family’s history goes deeper still: her parents, still living, date the arrival of Felix Sampayo Rodriguez and his wife Rosamaria to 1941. “They worked in the fields originally,” said Cruz-Pierce, recalling her grandmother’s stories of working in blueberry and strawberry fields likely in New Jersey.

However, Felix had an entrepreneurial mind and began his social climb. First there was a little bodega he opened to sell items to fellow workers. Then a service shuttling people to and from the airport. Eventually, he came to own night clubs in Philadelphia and the greater region, then theaters, including several in the city. “He had one in Camden called the Parkside. He had another one a little further up the street on Germantown that he called the San Juan. He had the Century on 6th and Erie, and the Ruby on York,” Cruz-Pierce recalled. “But the Teatro Puerto Rico was the only one that did live shows. That was like the flagship theater.”

Cruz-Pierce grew up nearby, on Howard then Front Streets, before later relocating to New Jersey. She worked at the Teatro from childhood until she married at age 25 and her grandfather sold it in 1985. While under his ownership the theater served as an institution in the neighborhood and Puerto Rican community, showing both Spanish-language films and live performances, including from famous actors in the films. She added these were marquee attractions, with the theater getting first crack at exciting new Spanish language films in a time before Univision and Telemundo were able to provide native speakers with in-home entertainment.

“Wednesday was always the new run. I used to drive up with my grandfather to New York early in the morning, pick up the films, load them up, and then drive to Philadelphia, put them in the theater, have the film ready when the cameraman came, go home, eat dinner, get dressed, and then come back. That was my Wednesday,” Cruz-Pierce said.

Then, crowds would go “crazy” when actors and singers such as Vicente Fernández, Sandro (de América), and Sabu arrived for live performances. Wrestling matches were also performed in the space, which Cruz-Pierce recalled as a 600-seat theater with a steep, sloped seating arrangement and stage. She also holds many more mundane, but still important memories, such as deep friendships she made with other girls her age as they worked the theater and sold from the candy stand. Yet, none are perhaps more indelible than a grand re-opening. Following a fire in the theater, the exact date unknown, it had to close for a time for repairs. On the night it reopened, she remembers a packed theater with a line out the door. Everybody seemed to want to show their support. A photograph she still keeps shows patrons toasting her grandfather, decked out in a suit while raising his drink in turn. “I was overwhelmed by the amount of people,” Cruz-Pierce said. “You could not walk in there.”

Down, But Not Out

The theater’s history since Rodriguez sold it in 1975 is somewhat hazy. Cruz-Pierce said the next owner had plans to turn it into a hotel, a vision that never appears to have materialized. 36 years then passed until a church, Iglesia Ministerio Maranatha Pentecostal, purchased the property in 2011, worshipping there until a few years ago.

Newspaper records suggest a record shop and nuisance bar may have operated at the address prior to the church’s ownership, although it is unclear whether such functions utilized the actual theater space. By the early 2000s, Google Street View images show a shuttered and nameless facade that persisted until at least 2012, followed by some restoration work and signage denoting the church’s occupancy by 2014. Evidence of upkeep continued until the “for sale” sign went up sometime in 2023 and the threat of demolition that followed.

What is clear is that the building has endured substantial physical transformation, particularly of its interior. An early photograph from its time as The Diamond shows a cavernous theater space with ornate flourishes flanking the stage and a pair of faux-balconies replete with arches and columns. Cruz-Pierce believes much of that was damaged by the Teatro-era fire. Photographs from its reopening show what appear to be new wood paneling and light fixtures on the walls. “When we fixed it up, we ended up putting curtains and paneling to cover what was damaged,” said Cruz-Pierce.

Upon her return to the theater this summer, she took note of nearly wholescale changes, including a faux/drop ceiling and a leveling of the floor in the main theater space that appeared to have been made at some point to convert it to a more traditional event room. The property historically included two smaller shops and storefronts flanking the main entrance,which Cruz-Pierce noted had also been converted.

APM has engaged Antonio Fiol-Silva, architect and founding principal at Center City-based SITIO architecture+urbanism, to lead the redevelopment of the theater and the creation of a master plan for the surrounding commercial corridor. APM previously received grant money to start the process for both and more recently received a $650,000 implementation award from Wells Fargo’s Regional Foundation to begin performing work. The nonprofit has also kicked off a $10 million fundraising campaign to complete the vision.

Both Ruiz and Fiol-Silva say exactly what will take place inside the theater–renovation or restoration–will be dictated by what they find as they begin to chip away at the layers added to the space over time. The vision is indeed to convert it back to a theater, a concept Fiol-Silva is familiar with as lead architect of FringeArts’ theater in Old City, a former pump house. “This will be more of a black-box type of performance space that can be used in different iterations: to have events, to have educational activities, and to have performances, primarily,” Fiol-Silva explained.

The greater challenge could come from revisioning the neighborhood. Fiol-Silva is currently working with APM to flesh out a master planning document for a four-block stretch of Germantown Avenue from Berks to Dauphin Streets. The Teatro and Cousin’s Supermarket at 5th and Berks Streets will serve as currently existing-anchors, while plans for a market-style food court and centralized food truck destination could also serve as primary points of interest. From there, APM hopes to bring new commercial development along the corridor while beautification efforts add to the experience. “As Germantown Avenue cuts through [on a diagonal], it creates these very odd triangles and kind of semi-dangerous intersections,” said Fiol-Silva. “So part of this also will be to rescue some of those little triangular parklets or open spaces and put them to some kind of utility and make crossings easier, not unlike what has happened on Passayunk Avenue where all those little parks have grown trees and fountains and become little nodes.”

Affordable housing also remains a priority as large-scale condominium and apartment development continues to press in from Kensington and Temple University’s campus. Fiol-Silva and Ruiz explained that the plan is to try and engineer the development of dense, but affordable housing, numbering 400 to 900 units, on empty lots in the district, potentially through the creation of an overlay with the City or other rezoning measures. “This was a neighborhood where nobody wanted to come and now it’s getting gentrified. Definitely a neighborhood of choice,” Ruiz said. “I like the idea of mixed use, you know, mixed income.” Ultimately, Ruiz said the hope is that they can welcome, but also guide new development, while largely keeping the neighborhood and its importance to the Puerto Rican community intact.

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