Can you name all five historic names for this former Thurman Street movie theater?
How Many Names Did This Theater have while operating as a theater? Answer is: FIVE names.
Test your skill…
1912: Ideal Theater was Designed by Emil Schacht and Son (silent movie theater)
owner: Conrad LeBlanc
1927: The Senate (facade remodel)
1929: The Bluebird
1944(45): Elmo (Fire c. 1949)
1951: The Crown
Closed December 1953 was used as a warehouse for years.
Emil Schacht practiced architecture in Oregon for decades and is attributed for introducing the residential English Arts & Crafts style to Portland (Ritz p. 347). His fifteen residential buildings in Willamette Heights neighborhood (1905-1909) are worthy of a Multiple Properties National Register Nomination. The advocates fort the Irvington Historic District have documented and preserved many of his notable residences. He designed Astoria City Hall in 1904 which is still standing and had been adaptively reused as a hotel. The Lewis and Clark Exposition Building (1905) was one of his more famous designs. My person favorite building for its cultural significance to Portland’s Black History and pleasing design is the Golden West Hotel.
The architectural firm Emil Schacht and Son lasted from 1910-1916.
Every secondary source states that the theater had 300 seats. This document leads me to believe there were four hundred in the peek period of significance.
All historic sources state the theater seated between 300-330 patrons looking at the letter below I’m inclined to think that the theater in the WWII years seated 400 plus. Glad that James Lommasson and Stewart Harvey remodeled this building in 2004. I am often distracted by articles around Portland, OR and censorship in the late teens. Oddly enough in 1920 C.E. Yeager proprietor of the Ideal Theater was fined for having a girl under the age of 18 working in his theater-it must have been a sting because six theater owners were charged.