Santa Barbara’s monumental Arlington Theater, designed by the firm of Edwards & Plunkett and originally owned by the West Coast chain, is a relatively late “atmospheric” movie palace dating from 1931. Its scale is unusually vast even for its genre; the box office occupies a separate open-air pavilion adjoining the sidewalk, while the auditorium itself is set far back from the street and approached via a broad promenade linking the two structures. A cavernous loggia extends the full width of the auditorium block’s upper story, while the building’s enormous octagonal tower is distinguished by a strange rocket-like pinnacle which may have originally carried signage. The ambitious scale of the Arlington’s exterior is not matched by a commensurate level of detail, however, and its coarse design foreshadows the fate of much Spanish Revival work yet to come.