It's always mentioned in many forums but few people can tell me about its history and the internet lacks any information about it.
One of the things I heard is that after the World War II. The theater was converted into a car repair shop and now seeing it again with its walls trying its hard to stand and its facade still battling the weather. I can see that structures inside were torn down.
What will ever happen to this Art deco building near Buendia? From the smart and nice people of Manila Nostalgia I was able to learn that this building is called the Morosi Theater.
What kind of Theater was the Morosi Theater? How many people in it have died and also found love and inspiration from watching a play or a movie?
4 comments:
It was recently bought and torn down by a trucking company. I was probably the first to post Morosi Theater at the Manila Nostalgia FB group. You are right, not much about it's origins are known except that it was an art-deco movie house probably erected in the early 30s. Post-WW2 it became the Van Ness Motor Works Shop. Now, it's all just memories.
Too bad, so sad. I've seen that establishment for decades because we live on the street behind that bldg. The old timers I talked to then told me they call it Cine Morosi but it's more of a Stage Play they said not a regular movie house.
Iis this Morosi Theater is also known as Teatro de Manila?
The proprietor of the shop was an Italian in Manila named D. Celeste Morosi (Celeste is a unisex Italian given name). He had lived briefly in Manila in the early decades of the 1900s before moving to Indonesia, where he married the former D.ยช Adriana Routier, of Dutch-Indo descent with French and Chinese-Indonesian ancestry. They later moved to Shanghai, China, where they resided through the 1930s. Several of their children and the eldest of their grandchildren were born there. They fled the Japanese conquest of Shanghai in 1937 to Singapore, then to Indonesia, and eventually to Manila, just prior to the Japanese invasion.
One son had married a lady of Macanese-Portuguese descent in Shanghai. They were the parents of Junie Morosi (who made news in Australia in the 1970s...).
After the War, younger son, D. Enrico Vicente Morosi, married a Filipina in Manila whose family came from Cagayan de Oro. He operated the post-War Morosi Motors in a converted Art Deco theater building along Taft Ave. Extension.
Much of the family emigrated to Australia later on
(RESEARCHED ARTICLE by RomRos Azarcon @ Members Manila Nostalgia)
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