[1][2] Designed and constructed from 1929-30 by Los Angeles-based architect Clifford Balch and engineer Floyd E. Stanbery, the Visalia Fox Theatre was erected at the end of the Silent Film era at a cost of $225,000 (2.9 million in 2010 dollars).

Having been purchased by the expanding Mann Theater corporation, and in order to stay in competition with two triplex movie theatres opening in Visalia around the same time, the one-auditorium was split into three screens.

The Fox would continue with this format showing first-run movies for 20 years until late 1996, when Mann built a 12-screen multiplex in the Sequoia Mall on the other side of town.

[1] The decadently lavish ambiance of the theater is the result of an artistic technique called trompe-l'œil, a French phrase indicating an object that appears to be something it is not.

Common at the beginning of the culture industry and the Golden Age of Hollywood, this kitsch approach to construction was a simple function of finances and practicability.

Architects and contractors eschewed prohibitively expensive materials like high-quality wood, gold leaf, and marble for more reasonably-priced ingredients like plaster and paint.