Escalante Theater Center

The Board of Young Workers was created in 1884 by the master carpenter Gregorio Gea Miguel in order to provide cultural and religious instruction on holidays to children in need. From the beginning it received the support of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, Escoles de Sant Josep and Gran Associació de la Mare de Déu dels Desamparados.

The Patronat put its headquarters in an old house on Landerer Street in front of a corner where this inscription still appears: “1799 Plaça de Valldigna”. Its façade preserves a stone voussoired portico, with heraldic shield, which gives access to a patio with two segmental arches. It is curious a colonette and two small attached arches that have been embedded in the wall of the first floor that overlooks the courtyard, as a possible memory of the previous construction. Among the elements of the current building we must consider the chapel and the small theater, of some artistic interest. The first is a small and narrow room, voussoired, with a dome on shells and two barrel vaults with lunettes on each side, in the presbytery, this is separated from the rest of the oratory by two iron columns supporting three arches, the central one peralted and the sides lowered. The decoration is rococo with plaster rock. The dome has a fresco painting of Our Lady of the Angels by Vicente Gaius Preface. The plaster set is by Francisco Monleón Zuñiga and the gilding is by Juan Frucio.

The images are modern protruding that of Our Lady of the Angels and St. Louis, which is quite worthy, and presides over the only altar, next to it are two rooms with St. John Berchmans and St. Stanislaus of Kotska, in polychrome wood.

The theater offers a modernist air due to the garlands that decorate it, being also interesting the exposed iron columns, some of which are lined with cement, columns from a ship affected, by foundation or rather capture, by the war of 1914-1918.

At the end of 2016, a technical report revealed the serious structural deficiencies of the historic building that had housed the Escalante Theater and the Valencia Provincial Council decided to abandon it a year later. The institution remains committed to the artistic project but is forced to start an itinerant period through several theaters in the city under the name of Escalante Nòmada until finding a new stable headquarters.

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