History
The Century 21 Theatre and the site of Century 21 Plaza
Before the shopping center there was a single-screen movie house with 1,065 seats and a coffee shop beside it. The building is gone; the name stayed.
A first-run house on Colorado Boulevard
The Century 21 Theatre stood at 1370 South Colorado Boulevard, a single-screen cinema of 1,065 seats designed by the architect Richard L. Crowther.1
Cinema Treasures, the theatre historians’ database, records it as opened by National General Cinemas on December 22, 1966, with a grand-opening advertisement posted by a contributor. Operators over its life are listed as Century Circuit Inc., Fox West Coast Theatres Corp. and National General Theatres.1
The plaza’s own account, published on the site it replaced, dates the theatre to 1967 and credits its construction, together with the White Spot coffee shop beside it, to Ben Antonoff, whom that account describes as the family patriarch. It names the opening picture as Casino Royale and the closing picture as The Last Emperor, and gives 1990 as the year the theatre closed.2
The two accounts do not agree on dates. Casino Royale, the 1967 James Bond spoof, opened in the United States on April 28, 1967, which fits a 1967 opening night but not December 1966; Cinema Treasures gives 1993, not 1990, for the closing, and records that the building then became a Soundtrack electronics store. Until the family confirms the dates from its own records, both are given here.1,2,3
The THX years
The Century 21 was a first-run house through the 1970s and 1980s. In the late 1980s it was renovated as a THX-certified theatre, and its large screen and sound system made it a regular booking for action and science-fiction releases.1
After it closed, the auditorium became a Soundtrack electronics store, later an Ultimate Electronics. The former White Spot became a Hooters restaurant. The theatre building was eventually torn down; a Cinema Treasures contributor noted in 2019 that a parking lot occupied its footprint.1,2
The White Spot
The White Spot was a Denver chain, not the Canadian one of the same name. William F. Clements, a Colorado native taken with the diner boom he had seen in Los Angeles, opened the first in 1947 in an existing storefront at 22 South Broadway and went on to build 29 restaurants, several designed by the Los Angeles firm Armet and Davis, the leading practitioners of the Googie style, who did seven Colorado locations between 1961 and 1969.4
Which architect designed the South Colorado Boulevard White Spot, and when it closed, is not established by the sources consulted for this page.
Century 21 Plaza
Antonoff & Co. redeveloped the site as Century 21 Plaza, roughly 32,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space in new buildings at the northeast corner of South Colorado Boulevard and East Arkansas Avenue. The project won the Rocky Mountain Shopping Center Association’s STAR Award for New Construction, Design and Aesthetics.2,5
Antonoff & Company was founded in 1967. If the theatre’s 1967 date holds, the two began the same year, and the firm that redeveloped the corner had been in business as long as the theatre it replaced. That is a fact worth having on both sites, once it is confirmed.2,5
Sources
- 1Century 21 in Denver, CO · Cinema Treasures · accessed 2026-09-04Main entry and contributor comments (rivest266, Spartan117Rex, kennyjames, MickSullivan).
- 2Century 21 Plaza | Denver, CO (the plaza’s previous website) · C21, LLC · accessed 2026-09-04Home and Location pages of the Weebly site this one replaces.
- 3Casino Royale (1967 film) · Wikipedia · accessed 2026-09-04Release dates: London April 13, 1967, New York April 28, 1967.
- 4Preservation win for a Googie-style building in Denver · Docomomo US · accessed 2026-09-04History of the Denver White Spot chain.
- 5Antonoff & Co. project record · Antonoff & Co. · accessed 2026-09-04Facts supplied by the firm: developer, size, RMSCA STAR Award, founding year 1967.