The theater was renovated in by Hoffman-Henon, the architects of the Boyd Theatre. The refined white brick and terra cotta Broadway was demolished in the s for a drive-through restaurant.
This large theater had entrances on both streets with a lobby at the point facing northwest. A nickelodeon had been located here which was expanded in This photograph, looking northeast to the Broad Street elevation, shows the pronounced advertising of the silent film, the Sea Hawk.
The theatre survived into the s and was converted into a drug store in Also surviving as a shadow of its former self is the Jumbo Theatre.
This 1, seat theatre was constructed in to the designs of Carl Berger and renovated in by Hoffman-Henon Co. As evidenced by the huge elephant sign suspended over the front doors, the theater was named after the famous elephant that P. Barnum bought from the London Zoo in The building is currently being converted into a dollar store and the paneling has been removed, exposing the original ornamental brickwork. The proscenium arch inside had survived until this spring.
This 1, seat theater opened in , closed in the s and was subjected to decades of neglect and vandalism prior to its demolition. The 2, seat Uptown was also designed by Magaziner, Eberhard, and Harris, and is considered one of their finest buildings. Grace of line, delicacy of coloring, beauty of craftsmanship, and mystery of scintillating and reflecting surfaces. It closed in , briefly reopened in , and is now the focus of an ambitious preservation effort by the Uptown Entertainment Development Corporation.
The Midway Theatre opened in in the Kensington neighborhood. The 2, seat theater was one of the largest theatres outside of Center City — and operated as a second-run theatre showing films that had already opened downtown. Up until a couple of years ago, it was an electrical supply house, with the back warehouse still possessing some of the original plaster work that surrounded the screen.
By the theatre had been gutted and it was operating as a Dollar Tree store. It was vacant by Philadelphia Inquirer story here. Photos of original decor un-veiled, BUT now being gutted View link.
An additional set of photos taken by Michael Enio Reali is here. My father also went there as a kid. The former facade of the Girard Theatre after it had been converted to Klein's Food Market but before the ornamentation and marquee were removed.
Beautiful decaying plaster faces adorned the Girard Theatre's balconies. Join us on Patreon for high quality photos, exclusive content, and book previews Read the Abandoned America book series: Buy it on Amazon or get signed copies here Subscribe to our mailing list for news and updates.
The next year it was rebuilt, but went bankrupt roughly ten years later. Rumor has it that around this time a teenaged Milton Berle worked at the theater. Years passed and the marquee and ornamentation on the facade were removed, leaving a listless, anonymous brick hulk of a building that barely gave any impression of what its former life had been.
The former facade of the Girard Theatre after it had been converted to Klein's Food Market but before the ornamentation and marquee were removed In November a friend invited me to go photograph it with him - on my birthday, no less - as demolition was already in progress and the building would soon be gone. I had tried to gain access through the supermarket before, as it was the only way to enter the theater, but was unsuccessful. Now, there was only some plastic construction netting sealing off the abandoned supermarket, which had changed names twice and settled at the Fine Fare Market before closing for good.
As we entered the columns and lip of the mezzanine were visible but a drop-tiled ceiling obscured the rest. We climbed over some rubble in the dark, went up a sketchy staircase, and were out in the old theater.
There's a certain feeling you get when you're in a place you can tell almost nobody has been in for decades, a sort of temporal overlapping of what it once was and what it has become. The Girard Theatre had been inaccessible since the late s, forgotten, with a little supermarket slapped together on the first floor.
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