1332-1342 Main Street

The first Goodman & Galewsky (G & G) Theater was housed in Turner Hall where Lyman Park is now.  In 1913, the St. Helena Star announced the opening of F.T. Mooney’s new business building further south on Main Street. It was built of reinforced concrete with a frontage of 78 feet by 120 feet deep and was designed for theater purposes. The original theater boasted 400 seats and 150 opera chairs, a modern stage, and 2 standing sets.  Goodman & Galewsky leased the theater and it was open every evening.  In 1915, it was renamed the Liberty Theater and its first film was D.W. Griffith’s epic Birth of a Nation.  Showings of many other Griffith films were so successful that the 5-cent ticket price expanded to 10 cents, thus ending the era of the Nickelodeon Movie Theater in St. Helena.

Over the years, successive owners have renamed the theater as the Roxy and then the Liberty again.  In 1996, when Charlotte Wagner took over the lease, she performed a serious upgrade to the facilities and the equipment.  She renamed it the Cameo Cinema. When Cathy Buck assumed the lease in 2008, the Cameo entered the 21^st century.   It now offers a state of the art digital projection system and the Dolby Atmos sound system, providing a world-class movie experience for its patrons.  The Cameo Cinema is one of the oldest continuously running single screen theaters in the United States.

On either side of the original theater was a room available for other businesses.  There are now four storefronts occupying this wide building. Over the years, occupants have been an electric company, a real estate and insurance broker, a bank, a telegraph office and a grocery store.  Now Daisy Clothing Boutique, Yvonne Rich Real Estate, Patina Fine Jewelry, and St. Helena Real Estate occupy the four storefronts.