Weybosset Street was alive with excitement as nearly 14,000 people attended the opening of the new 3,100 seat Loew’s State Movie Palace on October 6, 1928 to see the movie “Excess Baggage” on the big screen. Those lucky enough to have seats to the show were led by their usher, past talking parrots, into the opulent theater. People in Providence enjoyed the last days of the fabulous Roaring Twenties with no idea that in a little over a year the Jazz Decade would end, and the city built on industry would succumb to the Great Depression.

Since 1978, the Theatre has been on the National Register of Historic Places and has undergone extensive (historically accurate) renovations, becoming a world-class venue. Launching 14 national tours since 2008, the PPAC presents a major roster of Broadway touring theatricals annually. A broad range of concerts, dance, comedy, family shows and much more bring hundreds of thousands of people into Providence each year to experience the magic of live performance in what has been called “the jewel of Weybosset Street.”

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The film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,directed by Jack Clayton, starred Robert Redford as the newly wealthy businessman Jay Gatsby trying to win the affection of his former love Daisy Buchanan, played by Mia Farrow. Set against the rich social landscape of the Roaring Twenties, the film explores the decadence of the American dream and the nature of wealth and class division. The actors, draped in pastel seersucker, fine speckled cashmere, and silk ties and scarves in every color, played their roles against the backdrop of the gleaming white terracotta Rosecliff, standing in as Gatsby’s grand Long Island estate.  Rosecliff played its role perfectly. Theresa Fair Oelrich, a silver heiress from Nevada, commissioned the mansion in 1909, as a place for summer entertaining on a grand scale. Stanford White, the principal architect, modeled the estate after the Grand Trianon retreat of Versailles, with a classical arcade of arched windows and paired columns. The mansion offers unexpected views of the surrounding area through an en filade special arrangement; the doors dividing rooms are aligned on a single axis with those of connecting rooms, providing vistas from one end of the house to the other. The house includes a grand ballroom and a swooping limestone “sweetheart staircase” that greets guests when they enter. The back lawn, ideal for a leisurely roam, overlooks the Newport Cliff Walk and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1902, at the time of its completion, Rosecliff cost $2.5 million, the equivalent of about $65.5 million today. During the residency of the Oelrichs, servants kept Rosecliff in notoriously clean condition, with Theresa Oelrich conducting an inspection of the house every morning and instructing her domestic staff to change the beds daily regardless of whether or not guests had used them. Mrs. Oelrich was known to engage in the maintenance herself, taking a mop and a pail to any marble floor that fell short of her standards. “When I die, bury me with a cake of sapolio [soap] in one hand and a scrubbing-brush in the other; they are my symbols,” Mrs. Oelrich once said. The last private resident of Rosecliff, J. Edgar Monroe, became known for lavish parties, often with a Mardi Gras theme and involving fancy costumes. In contrast to the formal dinners thrown by the Oelrichs, the Monroes’ parties were notable for being relaxed and easygoing, with an air of conviviality uncommon in the social scene of the time, but perhaps more recognizable to Jay Gatsby. 

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