The Stanford Theatre opened on June 9, 1925. By the 1960s it was run down. In 1987, after a sell-out festival of Fred Astaire films, David Woodley Packard persuaded his father to have the Packard Foundation buy it; it reopened in 1989 with The Wizard of Oz.
It specializes in films made between 1910 and 1970, and a Wurlitzer organ rises from the pit to play between shows and for silent films.