 Majestic Theatre marquee, showing D. W. Griffith's Dream Street in 1921 | |
 | |
| Former names | Majestic Theatre |
|---|---|
| Address | 739 SW Washington Street |
| Location | Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 45°31′16″N122°40′47″W / 45.5210°N 122.6797°W |
| Construction | |
| Opened | June 10, 1911 |
| Renovated | 1929 |
| Closed | 1955 |
| Demolished | 1957 |
United Artists Theatre, originally known as the Majestic Theatre, was a movie palace in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was Portland's first theater exclusively for movie screening.
The Majestic Theatre opened as Portland's first "palace" for motion pictures on June 10, 1911, at the northeast corner of Southwest Park Avenue and Washington Street. [1] It had 1,100 seats, [1] and was originally owned by Edwin F. James. [2]
In 1929, it was sold to J. J. Parker Theatres, who renovated it and changed its name to United Artists Theatre. [1] The building was designed by Bennes and Herzog, who are also designed Portland's Hollywood Theatre. During the renovation, offices on the second floor were converted into a lounge measuring 40 feet (12 m) by 100 feet (30 m), and the interior was refitted. [1] Mayor George Luis Baker spoke at its rededication ceremony on September 29, 1928.
The theatre closed in 1955 and was demolished in 1957. [1] The site is now occupied by the Union Bank Tower (formerly known as the Bank of California building), built from 1967–1969. [1]
C. W. & George L. Rapp, commonly known as Rapp & Rapp, was an American architectural firm famed for the design of movie palaces and other theatres. Active from 1906 to 1965 and based in Chicago, the office designed over 400 theatres, including the Chicago Theatre (1921), Bismarck Hotel and Theatre (1926) and Oriental Theater (1926) in Chicago, the Five Flags Center (1910) in Dubuque, Iowa and the Paramount Theatres in New York City (1926) and Aurora, Illinois (1931).
Wells Fargo Center is a 40-story, 166.4 m (546 ft) tower and a five-story adjacent office building with three levels of parking below the surface in Portland, Oregon. The tower became the tallest building in the state of Oregon when it was completed in 1972.
The Blue Mouse Theatre title was used for several historic vaudeville and movie venues opened by John Hamrick in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The name may have been inspired by a lounge in Paris. Hamrick is said to have used the colored rodential title for his first theatre in each city.
The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall is a historic theater building and performing arts center in Portland, Oregon, United States. Part of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, it is home to the Oregon Symphony, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, White Bird Dance Company, and Portland Arts & Lectures. It is also a concert and film venue. Originally the Paramount Theatre, it is also locally nicknamed "The Schnitz".
The Chicago Theatre, originally known as the Balaban and Katz Chicago Theatre, is a landmark theater located on North State Street in the Loop area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1921, the Chicago Theatre was the flagship for the Balaban and Katz (B&K) group of theaters run by A. J. Balaban, his brother Barney Balaban and partner Sam Katz. Along with the other B&K theaters, from 1925 to 1945 the Chicago Theatre was a dominant movie theater enterprise. Currently, Madison Square Garden, Inc. owns and operates the Chicago Theatre as a 3600 seat performing arts venue for stage plays, magic shows, comedy, speeches, sporting events and popular music concerts.
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The architecture of Houston includes a wide variety of award-winning and historic examples located in various areas of the city of Houston, Texas. From early in its history to current times, the city inspired innovative and challenging building design and construction, as it quickly grew into an internationally recognized commercial and industrial hub of Texas and the United States.
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John Adolph Emil Eberson was an Austrian-American architect best known for the development and promotion of movie palace designs in the atmospheric theatre style. He designed over 500 theatres in his lifetime, earning the nickname "Opera House John". His most notable surviving theatres in the United States include the Tampa Theatre (1926), Palace Theatre Marion (1928), Palace Theatre Louisville (1928), Majestic Theatre (1929), Akron Civic Theatre (1929), the Paramount Theatre (1929), the State Theater 1927, and the Lewis J. Warner Memorial Theater (1932) at Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts. Remaining international examples in the atmospheric style include both the Capitol Theatre (1928) and State Theatre (1929) in Sydney, Australia, The Forum and Le Grand Rex.
An atmospheric theatre is a type of movie palace design which was popular in the late 1920s. Atmospheric theatres were designed and decorated to evoke the feeling of a particular time and place for patrons, through the use of projectors, architectural elements and ornamentation that evoked a sense of being outdoors. This was intended to make the patron a more active participant in the setting.
The Union Bank Tower, formerly known as the Union Bank of California Tower and originally as the Bank of California building, is an 82 m (269 ft), 15-story office building completed in 1969 in downtown Portland, Oregon. It was briefly the tallest building in the city when it topped-out in 1968, but was soon eclipsed by the Georgia-Pacific Building.
The Bank of California Building, also known as the Durham & Bates Building and currently the Three Kings Building, is a historic former bank building in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978. The three-story building was designed by A. E. Doyle in an Italianate style and completed in 1925. The ground floor features a two-story-high grand room with 36-foot (11 m) ceilings. The building's original owner and occupant, the Bank of California, moved out around the end of 1969 and sold the building in 1970. It was last used as a bank in 1977. It is currently owned by Surlamer Investments.
The State Theatre is a movie palace in Ann Arbor, Michigan, designed by C. Howard Crane in the Art Deco style.
The Broadway Theater District in the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles is the first and largest historic theater district listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). With twelve movie palaces located along a six-block stretch of Broadway, it is the only large concentration of movie palaces left in the United States. The same six-block stretch of Broadway, and an adjacent section of Seventh Street, was also the city's retail hub for the first half of the twentieth century, lined with large and small department stores and specialty stores.
The Gus J. Solomon United States Courthouse is a federal courthouse located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Completed in 1933, it previously housed the United States District Court for the District of Oregon until the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse opened in 1997. The Renaissance Revival courthouse currently is used by commercial tenants and formerly housed a U.S. Postal Service branch. In 1979, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as U.S. Courthouse.
The Orpheum Theatre is a live performance and musical theater built in the 1920s as a movie palace in downtown Madison, Wisconsin, located one block from the Wisconsin State Capitol. In 2008 the Orpheum was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Madison's best surviving representative of the movie palace era.
The Weatherly Building in Portland, Oregon, is a 12-story commercial office building. It was built in 1927–28 by ice cream businessman George Warren Weatherly.
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The Oregon Theatre, or Oregon Theater, was an adult movie theater in the Richmond neighborhood of southeast Portland, Oregon, United States. The theater was completed in 1925 and originally housed a Wurlitzer pipe organ and vaudeville stage. It would later screen Hollywood, art-house, and Spanish-language films. The building was acquired by the Maizels family in 1967 and became an adult cinema in the 1970s. It continued to operate as the city's longest running pornographic cinema and remained owned by a member of the Maizels family until 13 February 2020, when it went into foreclosure. It closed in early March 2020.
At the advent of the 20th century, the city of Portland, Oregon, was among the first on the United States West Coast to embrace the advent of the silent and feature film. The city's first movie palace, the Majestic Theatre, opened in 1911. By 1916, Portland had "the finest array" of movie houses on the West Coast relative to its population, pioneering venues dedicated exclusively to screening films. The popularization of the sound film in the early 1920s resulted in another boom of new cinemas being constructed, including the Laurelhurst, the Hollywood Theatre, and the Bagdad Theatre, the latter of which was financed by Universal Pictures in 1926.
Media related to Majestic Theatre (Portland, Oregon) at Wikimedia Commons