Imagine this: it’s late September 1928, and Providence is abuzz with activity. There are huge factories, some of the largest in their fields, employing thousands of people; trolley lines crisscross the whole city; boats are docked at piers in the Providence River; hundreds of trains stop at the station a day. Industrial Trust Bank, Providence’s first skyscraper at 428 feet tall, looming over downtown, is set to open to the public on Monday, October 1st. And Loew’s Theatre — Providence’s new “movie palace” — will do the same just days after on Saturday, October 6th.
By the end of the 1920s, movie techniques had developed significantly, and exciting plots, dashing stars, and beautiful leading ladies became prominent. Tickets to these shows were cheaper than live ones, and people flooded to see Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, and more. Marcus Loew saw opportunity: he created a national chain of “movie palaces,” where people bought not just a ticket to a film, but to an experience. In 1924, Loew’s, Incorporated, owned MGM Studios, which was producing movies for his theatre venue enterprise.
In the late 1920s, Loew had acquired a block of land on Weybosset Street, at that point considered the center of Providence, to build Loew’s Theatre. It was set to be the biggest and best movie theatre that the city would see at a projected cost of $1,000,000 dollars (but would actually cost $2,500,000 in the end).
Designed by Rapp and Rapp, prestigious theatre architects on the early 20th century, it boasted any and every amenity imaginable: a Morton organ with 1,500 pipes and a console on an independent elevator that could magically rise up from the stages (installed before “talkies” became the new norm); a Vitaphone, which could play a record of sounds and voices to accompany the film; cushy seating for over 3,200 people; lush lobbies with doormen at one’s beck and call; stately resting areas decorated in the style of Louis XIV.
On Saturday, October 6, 1928, the doors opened to crushing crowds: 14,000 people paid to enter the space from 11am to 11pm. Excess Baggage was the first film to show that day, multiple times, with organist Joe Stoves performing in between. A live red and green macaw was perched on a balcony. No expense was spared for the extravagance of the event. No one knew that in a year, the Roaring Twenties would give way to the Stock Market Crash and then the Great Depression.
Loew continued to show movies through the 1930s and 1940s, especially as film became a popular distraction during the Depression and a means of news acquisition during WWII. But by the 1960s, the future of Loew’s looked dim, as it did for most old movie houses in downtown. It was acquired in the early 1970s, renamed The Palace, and became a venue for a variety of live entertainment, including several notable rock bands. By 1975, though, the building was in a state of disrepair, losing revenue, and looking at the possibility of being razed to make way for another parking lot. Through efforts of Sylvia Dario and Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, the building was acquired, closed, and completely renovated and refurbished: the entire interior was cleaned, repaired, and painted; seats were reupholstered; fresh carpeting was installed. When the venue opened in 1976, it was renamed The Ocean State Theatre. It hosted first-run movies, fashion shows, opera, and symphonies. The theatre was formally purchased by a consortium of other local businesses, became a non-profit private corporation, and was again renamed: Ocean State Performing Arts Center.
In 1982, the building was renamed Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC). Through the 1990s and early 2000s, the building saw additional refurbishments, including the installation of PPAC’s iconic illuminated marquee, making this building one of the most photographed in the city.
]]>During the 1910s, entertainment venues were in a state of flux. They were originally created as spaces for live performances. With the advent of early film, many venue owners tried to switch entirely from live shows to movies – but found that they weren’t particularly lucrative. To increase profits, venues showcased highly popular vaudeville acts and supplemented them with film, often at the very end of the night. Despite contracting desirable shows, these venues were often overcrowded, inelegant, and uncomfortable. The Emery brothers saw an opportunity to build an opulent, spacious theatre space dedicated specifically to vaudeville performances. This venue was called Emery’s Majestic, and it was just that — majestic.
The stunning exterior features a white terra cotta facade with light green and gold grapevine detailing. The large arched window at the center of the building’s front allows in light to both the upper and lower lobbies. Walking in the main entrance and looking up, one would see an elliptical opening to the second floor and above to a leaded glass dome — all of which is still intact. The original auditorium space, done in an opulent, art nouveau style, could seat 3,000 people. When it opened, Emery’s Majestic was the pinnacle of elegance in performing arts venues in Providence.
The theatre opened in April 1917. The owners ran another, smaller Providence venue called The Emery. They relocated shows from that space to the Majestic upon the Majestic’s opening. Their zeal for a bigger, grander space didn’t necessarily take into account whether they could actually steadily fill the seats at the massive new venue, and they slowly ran out of resources. By early 1918, the Emery Brothers leased out the Majestic to another local theatre manager who had ample connections and could pull in bigger and better names. Emery’s Majestic became the Shubert Majestic.
From the late 1910s through the 1920s, the Shubert Majestic hosted touring companies of ever-expanding vaudeville, burlesque, and revue shows. Like the Providence Opera House, Shubert’s Majestic contracted performance troupes that included bevies of performers and whole chorus lines of female dancers, a collective group who would roll in on the local train line with a train car’s load of staging, equipment, and costuming. They would unload, perform for a week, and pack up to head to the next city. In the early 1920s, the Majestic hosted Al Jolson in both Sinbad and Bombo; acclaimed Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, who toured the world internationally several times over; and the touring production of Chu Chin Chow, a musical comedy based on the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. The latter went so far as to include live elephants into the show!
By the mid-1920s, the Majestic became a first-run movie theatre as the medium evolved and became more and more popular. An organ was installed to accompany the silent films. The Majestic stayed a movie theatre through the 1940s and early 1950s, before falling on hard times. Enter Trinity Repertory Company.
Trinity Rep was originally founded in the early 1960s by local theatre lovers who wanted to see outstanding theatre without having to travel to Boston or New York. They founded the company and opened their first production at Trinity Union Methodist Church, located on Broad Street. Support grew throughout the Company’s first decade, which eventually resulted in grants to acquire the Majestic. In 1973, Trinity acquired the building and renovated the interior extensively, including splitting the 3,000 seat auditorium into two smaller theatres: the Dowling Theatre, which seats 250 people, and the Chace Theatre, with seating for over 500. The building conversion also included adding on administrative offices, rehearsal spaces, and production shops, the latter of which are situated on the theatre’s original stage boards.
]]>Entertainment in the 1880s extended beyond opera and vaudeville to also include human spectacle in venues called “dime museums.” A phenomenon in the late 19th century, they were akin to circus sideshows in the respect that they used people as main attractions, capitalizing on those who didn’t fit a Western “norm,” including people with medical abnormalities and visible disabilities, as well as individuals from other regions of the world. These persons would be put on display for “educational purposes,” but they were often jeered at by spectators instead. In addition to these “displays,” live performers would also be on the bill, including acrobats, contortionists, singers, and comedians. Dime museums were fairly common, opening in many mid- and large-scale cities. Sometime in the early 1880s, the Providence Dime Museum opened on Westminster Street. Its exact opening date is unknown, but the first recorded newspaper advertisement dates to 1884. It was a short-lived enterprise in the city, lasting until 1887, but the billings were in keeping with dime museum trends; from an ad dated January 14, 1884: “The Living Human Doll”; “The Camel Child”; “Zulu princess and suite”; “Barnum’s famous Esau girl”; “a lady skeleton”; “a troupe of educated canaries”. Subsequent features were as problematic.
In 1887, the building was purchased, renovated, and renamed Keith’s Gaiety. The new owner, B.F. Keith, began his professional career working in the circus circuit before segueing to vaudeville and family-friendly entertainment, which he grew into a theatrical empire. While the Dime Museum relied on shock and spectacle, Keith’s Gaiety strove toward wonder and awe. The opening week at the Gaiety featured stuffed animals arranged in scenes from fairy tales, trained birds who sang in chorus, as well as a house from Japan – which would have been a curiosity for those who didn’t have means to travel the world in the 1880s.
In 1890, Keith sold the building, and over the course of the next 16 years, from 1890 to 1906, the establishment changed names several times: Lothrop’s Opera House (1890-1897); Olympic (1897-1902); Park Theatre (1902-1904); and Park Music Hall (1904-1906). These changes were more of a gimmick than anything else. With every name change, the venue would garner publicity – despite the fact that every iteration featured the same types of melodramatic and vaudevillian content.
The venue changed names once again in 1906, becoming the Nickel. The Nickel holds a special place in performing arts history in Providence: it was the first theatre to exclusively show movies, at that time the brand-new entertainment medium. The Nickel opened on April 18, 1906, playing four films, all of which were about 20 minutes in length. The premiere didn’t garner much attention in the newspaper though: April 18, 1906, was also the same day as a catastrophic earthquake in San Francisco, a headline which dominated newspaper headlines across the country for a week.
Within a few years, half a dozen other movie theatres were built and almost every other entertainment venue in Providence turned to featuring film. By the end of the 1910s, the Nickel was small, outdated, and didn’t live up to the other extravagant theatres in downtown. It was razed and the E.F. Albee Theatre, a state of the art movie house, opened in its place in 1919. A successful venue through the 1940s, the Albee faced decline until it was razed in 1970.
]]>The Theatre Comique was as different from the Providence Opera House as could be, despite being just blocks away. The Opera House was built as a handsome, stately performing arts venue. Theatre Comique was originally built as a billiard parlor and eventually retrofitted to serve as dual theatre and saloon. On the opening night at the Opera House, the city’s elite filled the house wearing their finest attire, where Mayor Thomas Doyle welcomed the crowd. Theatre Comique’s exact opening is lost to history; the first advertisement for performances didn’t appear in newspapers until August 1876, after it had been open for some time. The Opera House hosted well-known actors in pivotal roles during its existence. Theatre Comique’s shows could be considered unfit for “polite society.”
Theatre Comique was one of the first venues in New England to host “variety” shows, a revue that could include a wide array of performances: “dialect acts” and blackface routines, both of which used ethnic and racial stereotypes as fodder; ribald comedy sketches; acrobatics; magic shows; chorus lines; parodies of serious theatrical works; arias from popular operas. A combination of any of these types of acts could be seen either once or twice a day, six days a week. Admission at the Theatre Comique was affordable in the early 1880s, ranging from 20 to 50 cents per ticket. That left enough for patrons to also visit the bar. The building was a converted billiard parlor and meant that the house could only seat 350 to 400 people, fairly small compared to other venues designed as theatres. Proof of how highly lucrative variety shows were: proprietors Hopkins and Morrow shared $22,000 in profits one year, made from a small theatre with low admission. This was when $1,000 a year was considered a handsome income for a family man!
This theatre had a short life in Providence, lasting not even 20 years. On Friday, February 17, 1888, the building caught on fire. No one died in the blaze, but it deeply affected those connected with the theatre. The dancers of the Lilly Clay’s Colossal Gaiety Company who were performing at the Comique that week heard news of the fire and realized that their costuming would all be lost. They ran from their hotel to the theatre and convinced the firefighters to run in and grab their trunks. What was salvaged was ruined, although their manager apparently had spares that were kept separately from their racks. Comique’s orchestra leader, Professor Rinehart, lost his violin, a family heirloom, as it was locked up in the prop room. The most devastating loss was experienced by the house manager; he had recently bought out one of the owners – but hadn’t yet secured insurance on his investment. This was after he had lost property in another fire earlier that same week.
The next morning, an assessment was done on the Theatre Comique. Being a wooden building, it suffered significant damage with holes burned through a rear wall and roof. The structure, as well as an adjacent building, were both torn down shortly after the blaze.
]]>On the evening of December 4, 1871, carriage after carriage pulled up in front of a rather inconspicuous red brick building in downtown Providence. Well-dressed theatre-goers entered the lobby of the Providence Opera House, the city’s newest performing arts venue. The lobby was stately and elegant, while the auditorium of the theatre, which could seat over 1,400 people, was handsome and comfortable. Mayor Thomas Doyle greeted the audience from the stage before the opening night production of Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion, a drawing-room comedy. One attendee was purported to have said, “The play was not the best that might have been chosen, but it was selected because it gave the ladies an opportunity to show some handsome dresses.”
The opening of the Providence Opera House marked the beginning of a robust era for performing arts in Providence. In the 1870s, the population of the city was around 69,000 and increased to over 250,000 people by the end of the 1920s. Through this period, entertainment was available at every price point, in wide varieties, and in ever-changing modes. The Providence Opera House featured chaste, family-friendly productions of plays, dance, and opera, while other venues in the city hosted bawdier performances that were deemed uncouth.
At the beginning of the Opera House’s existence, it hosted travelling performers and relied on local actors to fill in supporting roles. Popular solo actors had a handful of signature roles that they’d perform. They would arrive in town, rehearse once or twice with a theatre’s resident acting company, perform for a week, and then move onto the next city. The 1873-1874 season ran for 42 weeks and had 136 attractions; while the leading roles were often filled by travelling performers (including Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth), the Opera House’s resident acting company averaged having to learn, rehearse, and perform three new plays each week during that one season. As theatre attendance was the major entertainment opportunity for people in the 19th century, patrons had ample opportunities to see a wide variety of shows.
The Providence Opera House continued on as a touring venue through its whole existence, but later on contracting whole productions, not just solo actors. With a major train depot in the heart of downtown, actors and managers would disembark and train cars would be unloaded of set flats, props, and costume trunks, sent promptly to that stop’s venue. Popular tours would stop multiple times in Providence, usually with the first run at the Opera House, and subsequent productions would be at cheaper, less prestigious venues. This gave the wealthy the advantage of seeing shows before others in society, but productions became available at lower price points for the working class during second and third runs.
By the early 1930s, the Opera House was outdated and property in Providence was at a premium. On March 14, 1931, the patrons filled the auditorium for the last time. Providence-born, nationally recognized star George M. Cohan returned to the city to perform on this final night. He was joined by Eddie Dowling and Rachel “Ray” Dooley, other notable actors with strong Rhode Island connections. The night was a teary-eyed send off for one of the most prestigious venues in Rhode Island. The following Monday, wrecking balls took down the Providence Opera House, leveling it to become a parking lot.
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