Something About Alhambra

A red fortress on the banks of the Wabash?

The Alhambra Theater of South Bend, Indiana, was what the author likens to the Cathedral of Saint Gorboduc after its conversion to a mosque (Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 34).

It sounds like a most impressive movie theater.

The Alhambra is a Moorish citadel, a group of buildings on a hill overlooking Granada, Spain, built between 1230 and 1354 that formed a great citadel of the Moorish kings of Spain. It is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture and one of the best-preserved palaces of the historic Islamic world, in addition to containing notable examples of Spanish Renaissance architecture. The word Alhambra derives from Arabic (al-Ḥamrāʼ) meaning 'the red one'; the complete form of which was (al-Qalʻat al-Ḥamrāʼ) 'the red fortress'. Geometric patterns, vegetal motifs, and Arabic inscriptions were the main types of decorative motifs [1].

In regard to the South Bend allusion, Bellairs seemingly picked a location he was familiar with (having been an undergraduate at Notre Dame from 1955 to 1959) and added a building whose ornate opulence would be far from the usual.

His friend Alfred Myers recalled one large movie palace in town that no doubt dated from the 1920s, but "I simply don't remember either its name or decor, despite having seen dozens of movies there over the course of four years. That was the era when theaters with outlandish, exotic decor were being built all over the country. I'm guessing that Bellairs inadvertently conflated the two names and mis-remembered the true name of the theater in South Bend [2]."

While there have been a handful of theaters in the United States carrying this name, none were located in Indiana [3].

References

• [1] Wikipedia: Alhambra
• [2] Correspondence with Alfred Myers.
• [3] Wikipedia: Alhambra (disambiguation)