In the late 1970s it closed. Since then it has been through several owners, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI),[4] which have had various plans, including renovating it into office space or reusing it as a theater. In 2014, it was announced that Columbia Development would be renovating the building for the Rensselaer County Chamber of Commerce.[5]
As of September 2018, the building has been repurposed into a modern office space behind the preserved façade. Current tenants include the Rensselaer County Chamber of Commerce, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Christopher Brian Salon.[6]
Building
The theater is part of a row of buildings along the east side of Fourth Street. It is five stories high, with a highly decorative front facade of brick and marble covered in glazed terra-cotta. On the ground level, rusticatedcolumns rise up to lion's heads. Five engaged marble columns frame the upper floors, rising to gargoyle-like figures, and two towers rise above the roofline at either end of the facade. The one above the main entry features a variety of terra cotta details: colonettes, dentils, escutcheons, and paretae[check spelling].[1]
The interior has suffered from years of neglect, but its basic plan remains. The tiledlobby with arched ceilings and paneled walls, leads via staircases to the two balconies, and into a foyer to the orchestra floor. Gold leaf adorned (or originally did) the arches in that section. The proscenium features a David Lithgow painting of Lafayette's visit to Troy in 1824. All these fixtures remain unchanged from the theater's original construction.[1]
History
Proctor, who had already built and operated several successful vaudeville theaters in Albany and New York City hired Arlard Johnson to design the theater, hoping to make it his grandest project since he had entered the business nearly three decades before. It cost $325,000[7][8] to construct, and when it opened in 1914 it became the largest theater in the state and was praised as "a structure ranking foremost in American theatrical circles."[1]
From their inception, he had realized the potential of motion pictures and had begun adapting his theaters to the new medium. The Troy Proctor's classically inspired double-balcony form lent itself well to the movies because it put the audience close to the stage no matter where they were in the theater. It had not been designed to accommodate a projector and screen, but by the 1920s a booth had been added. During that era, its productions, like many other theaters of the time, included both live and filmed entertainment. In the 1930s, with the advent of the sound era making the live act superfluous, the central chandelier was removed along with some other renovations, including removing the paintings from the lobby and painting over the gold leaf in the orchestra.[1]
After Proctor's death in 1929, the theater continued to operate as a popular downtown destination. After the mid-20th century, it began to lose business due to television and suburbanization. In 1977, it finally closed, its last show seen by a crowd of around 170 people. The final show was The Longest Yard starring Burt Reynolds. A year later the city acquired the property when it foreclosed on the then-owners. It is the only remaining movie palace in Troy, albeit unused for that purpose ever since then.
Relationship with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
RPI students frequented Proctor's Theater for movie screenings, live performances, and vaudeville acts during its run as a performance hall. Ads featuring performances at Proctor's Theater were featured in the RPI Student Newspaper, The Polytechnic, until Proctor's Theater closed in 1977.
In the early 1900s, RPI students performed vaudeville and musical acts at Proctor's Theater. The “RPI Nights” act originated in 1915 under the direction of C. F. Matthews, referred to as "Matty" by his peers at RPI. Matthews graduated from RPI in 1916, and the weekly RPI Nights performances also ended.[9]
In March 1922, a group of RPI students re-established the RPI Nights as a weekly act at Proctor's Theater. After a successful opening night, as described in The Polytechnic, the “Campus Five” was established. The group featured five RPI students and was led by Mark Albert “Pete” Gerwig. Their repertoire included musical performances on the banjo, saxophone, violin, and included clog dancing, folk singing, jazz, and more.[10] While the Campus Five had its origins at Proctor's Theater, the group performed at a range of RPI-hosted events, including dances, events, and dinners for various organizations on and off campus.
The RPI Nights performances were very well attended by the public. At one point, The Polytechnic stated "Tute nights are a great success. The size of the audience that attended the first performance was the largest ever assembled in the history of Proctor’s; according to the Manager Emde.[11]" After “Pete” Gerwig and the RPI Five graduated from RPI, it is unclear whether Rensselaer students continued to perform at Proctor's Theater as the Campus Five.
In later years, RPI hosted events and acts at Proctor's Theater. In the 1970s, the Rensselaer Concert Board hosted several musical and entertainment acts for the RPI community. In October 1975, the Rensselaer Concert Board presented in concert folk-rock groups Poco and McKendree Spring at Proctors.[12] This event was organized by RPI's Union Programs and Activities Committee (UPAC). UPAC also hosted the comedy radio show National Lampoon Radio Hour in 1975 at Proctor's Theater.[13]
In the early 2000s, RPI acquired the building and hoped to partially use it as office space and keep the theater. They eventually brought in a developer who proposed to use a state grant to gut the building's interior and replace the auditorium with office space, while keeping the facade. Residents organized a group and online petition in opposition to this, pointing to how successful the restoration of the Schenectady Proctor's had been for that city. The building was structurally sound, and could easily be restored to its original purpose.[15]
Proponents of the plan responded that the theater had not been successfully redeveloped in the years since it had closed and it was time to try something else to revitalize a block of downtown Troy that remained dilapidated. They noted that the Schenectady Proctor's still lost money and that the project would create jobs the city needed in a slow economy.[15][16]
Restore NY grant
As of March, 2011, the theatre is expected to receive $3.3 million from a "Restore NY" grant. The money would be used by Columbia Development to rehabilitate the theatre building and two adjacent office buildings, including the Chasan Building, which is also owned by RPI.[17]
In October 2011 it was announced that, in a $14.4 million public-private project including a $3.3 million Restore New York grant, Columbia Development Companies would acquire Proctor's Theater and launch a restoration.[18]
↑ Young, Elizabeth (April 8, 2009). "The Drama Over Troy's Theatre". Albany Times-Union. Hearst Corporation. Retrieved June 10, 2009. 32 years is a long time. 32 years vacant. 32 years of a block of Downtown Troy that I would not walk down alone after dark. 32 years of similar preservation efforts that have blossomed, and then withered. 32 years of potential, left unfulfilled. I am 31 years old - this building has been vacant for my entire lifetime.
Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital District. The city is one of the three major centers for the Albany metropolitan statistical area, which has a population of 1,170,483. At the 2020 census, the population of Troy was 51,401. Troy's motto is Ilium fuit, Troja est, which means "Ilium was, Troy is".
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut, closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer and Amos Eaton for the "application of science to the common purposes of life" and is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere.
There are several songs about Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute traditionally sung at special events.
WRPI is a non-commercial free-format college radio station run entirely by students attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and staffed by community members and students. WRPI broadcasts 365 days a year with an effective radiated power of 10,000 watts, serving listeners in Albany, eastern New York, western Massachusetts, Vermont, and via webstream. The studios are located in the basement of the Darrin Communications Center and the FM signal is broadcast from North Greenbush. Programming includes a wide range of music, cultural and public affairs programs, live bands, special events, and sports simulcasts, particularly of RPI hockey, football, and baseball. WRPI has a large record library dating to the origins of the station, estimated at 43,800 albums, and a large CD library, dating to the start of the medium.
Frederick Freeman Proctor, aka F. F. Proctor, was a vaudeville impresario who pioneered the method of continuous vaudeville. He opened the Twenty-third Street Theatre in New York City.
The Richard G. Folsom Library is a research library in the Rensselaer Libraries system constructed in the Brutalist style located on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. It is named after Richard Gilman Folsom, the President of the Institute from 1958–1971. The Folsom Library offers a variety of services to students and patrons of the library. In addition to loans, these services include class reserves, general writing and presentation assistance through the Center for Communication Practices, cultural and educational events, inter-library loans through ConnectNY, individual and group room reservations, computer labs, and wireless internet.
The Carnegie Building is the current home of the Cognitive Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. It is one of the westernmost buildings on the campus and as such provides scenic views overlooking the city of Troy and the Hudson River. The four-story building is named for Andrew Carnegie who donated $125,000 for its construction, which was completed in 1906.
Proctor's Theatre is a theatre and former vaudeville house located in Schenectady, New York, United States. Many famous artists have performed there, including Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Hal Holbrook, Ted Wiles, and George Burns, as well as many others. It has one of the largest movie screens in the Northeast.
The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) is a multi-venue arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, which opened on October 3, 2008. The building is named after Curtis Priem, co-founder of NVIDIA and graduate of the RPI Class of 1982, who donated $40 million to the Institute in 2004.
The Rensselaer Polytechnic is the student-run news organization of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to 2018, it was published in print every Wednesday during the Institute's fall and spring academic calendars, but now publishes online at poly.rpi.edu, following the same schedule.
Palmer Chamberlain Ricketts was the ninth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He served as president for 33 years and oversaw a period of major expansion and development of the university.
The Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC), originally the Broadway Theater and Community Theatre, is located on Broadway in Kingston, New York, United States. A Classical Revival building built in 1926, it is the only unaltered pre-World War II theater left in the city, and one of only three from that era in the Hudson Valley. It is also the largest proscenium theater between Manhattan and Albany.
The Central Troy Historic District is an irregularly shaped, 96-acre (39 ha) area of downtown Troy, New York, United States. It has been described as "one of the most perfectly preserved 19th-century downtowns in the [country]" with nearly 700 properties in a variety of architectural styles from the early 19th to mid-20th centuries. These include most of Russell Sage College, one of two privately owned urban parks in New York, and two National Historic Landmarks. Visitors ranging from the Duke de la Rochefoucauld to Philip Johnson have praised aspects of it. Martin Scorsese used parts of downtown Troy as a stand-in for 19th-century Manhattan in The Age of Innocence.
West Hall is a building on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in Troy, New York, United States. It is currently home to the Arts Department at RPI. It was previously a hospital, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Old Troy Hospital.
The RPI Engineers are composed of 21 teams representing Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in intercollegiate athletics, including men and women's basketball, cross country, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, swimming & diving, tennis, and track and field. Men's sports include baseball, football, and golf. Women's sports include field hockey, and softball. The Engineers compete in the NCAA Division III and are members of the Liberty League for all sports except ice hockey, which competes in NCAA Division I, as a member of ECAC Hockey.
The area of New York's Capital District, also known as the Albany metropolitan area, has seen prominent historical events, artistic creations, and unique contributions to the culture of the United States since the 17th century. The largest city in the area, Albany, consistently ranks high on lists of top cities/metro areas for culture, such as being 23rd in the book Cities Ranked & Rated. The Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro area ranked 12th among large metro areas, and Glens Falls ranked 12th among the small metro areas, in Sperling's Best Places, and Expansion Management gave the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area five Stars, its highest ranking, for quality of life features.
The history of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) spans nearly two hundred years beginning with its founding in 1824. RPI is the oldest continuously operating technological university in both the English-speaking world and the Americas. The Institute was the first to grant a civil engineering degree in the United States, in 1835. More recently, RPI also offered the first environmental engineering degree in the United States in 1961, and possibly the first ever undergraduate degree in video game design, in 2007.
Arland W. Johnson was an American architect. His work included theaters such as Proctor's Theatre.
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