Oriental Theatre (Portland)
Encyclopedia
The Oriental Theatre was a movie theater
located at 828 SE Grand Street in the East Portland commercial district of Portland, Oregon
. Built in 1927 the Oriental was a 2,038 seat movie palace
designed by Lee Arden Thomas
and Albert Mercier. The building's exterior was in the Italian Renaissance
style. The interior had an "almost surreal appearance" created by interior designer Adrien Alex Voisin. It was built by George Warren Weatherly. Demolished in 1970, the theater was located next to the Weatherly Building
, which remains standing.
before arriving in Portland around 1909, after which he ran the Empire Theatre and a series of movie theaters, including the Hollywood Theatre. Tebbetts presumably visited the East Indies
while travelling abroad in the late 1920s, and wanted a theatre designed to look like an East Indian temple.
Thomas and Mercier were chosen for their "association with East Portland" and their previous theatre design experience with the Bagdad Theater in Portland, McDonald Theatre
in Eugene
, and the Egyptian Theatre
in Coos Bay
. They moved into the Weatherly building upon its completion. The building cost was "variously reported between $300,000 and $500,000." The general contractor of the building was Robertson, Hay, and Wallace. While under construction, the project was called the "Crystal Ice & Storage Co. Office & Theatre Building."
Groundbreaking began on March 21, 1927, and was completed by December 31, 1927.
The building was designed and built at the same time as the neighboring Weatherly Building. The exterior design matched the Weatherly Building, and heat was supplied from it.
, Indochina
, and China
and included "columns on each side of the screen", said to be based on the Temple of Angkor Wat
in Cambodia
. There was a huge stylized face over the proscenium arch , "which had a wide open mouth baring fangs and eyes lit by red lightbulbs that would glow demonically before a show began" and "on the side walls and over the arch were life-sized plaster elephants, as well as apes, fishes, and mythological creatures, seemingly ready to pounce off the wall."
The lobby
and mezzanine
were decorated with Hindu deities and "the main staircase leading to the balcony was flanked by a pair of huge dragons," while the auditorium was topped by a vast dome, lit indirectly by 2400 light bulbs, as well as a 2000 pounds (907.2 kg) "tree-sized Far Eastern style chandelier" including 3000 light bulbs in seven colors, costing $7000. The asbestos
drop curtain was blue with gold fringes and tassels and included a hand-painted royal procession scene, with "towering snow-capped mountains in the background [and] a misty blue apparition of the seated Buddha
." The Historic American Building Survey noted the "remarkably early extensive use of neon lighting" in the sign and sheet-metal marquee.
Music was provided by a $50,000 Wurlitzer
235 Special 3-manual 13-rank organ
on an ascending platform, a full orchestra pit
on another ascending platform. The Wurlitzer was panned for being "never clearly audible from many of the nearly 5000 seats underneath the balcony", and for being difficult to hear for the organist. Knabe concert grand pianos were used in the orchestra and on stage, as well as a Knabe-Ampico grand player piano
in the smoking room. The spacious stage was "large enough to accommodate the biggest stage shows of the day." There were also "luxurious lounges, smoking rooms and even a nursery in its basement". The nursery was called the "Kiddie Circus". It changed to a movies-only format by the 1940s "and lost its towering vertical marquee in favor of a more modest marquee not long afterwards", but remained a city showplace for years, and was used in the mid-1960s for concerts on its "mighty Wurlitzer".
s The Girl from Everywhere and The Moon of Israel. Portland mayor George Luis Baker dedicated the theatre, proclaiming he had "seen more expensive houses, but never a more beautiful one." Shows initially cost 25 cents for matinees, 35 cents for evenings.
The theatre upgraded to a sound system for talking pictures by 1930, perhaps earlier, as it won a bronze award for acoustics and sound systems from Will H. Hays
's Exhibitors Herald-World that year. The Oriental advertised "WHERE THE SOUND IS BETTER" on their marquee in neon after winning the award.
Aside from independent operators, the theatre was leased to Evergreen Theatres in 1935, the Rainier Theatre Corporation/Fox-West Coast Theatre Company by 1940. While it "had a history of proving burdensome to independent operators", the theatre was leased to the City of Portland for 2.5 years in 1965. During this lease, Isaac Stern
appeared with the Portland Symphony Orchestra
on February 28, 1966,. It returned to showing films after the lease expired.
Everything inside the theatre was auctioned off, with the Wurlitzer going to the Organ Grinder Restaurant, who later upgraded their console, sending the Oriental Theatre organ console to Uncle Milt's Pizza on Grand Blvd in Vancouver, Washington
. Uncle Milt's Pizza closed in 1999, the organ-facaded building being sold to Rite Aid
, who abandoned plans to build a drugstore there. The location is now a Lord's Gym Christian "sports outreach center". Some of the plasterwork went to the Robin Hood Theatre in Sherwood, Oregon
, which was being rebuilt and was subsequently renamed the Sherwood Oriental Theatre.
The Oriental Theatre was demolished in February or April 1970, making room for parking at the Weatherly Building. It was lamented as an "amazing old theater was tragically demolished to make way for another parking lot, an irreplaceable loss for the city of Portland". As of 2009, the space formerly occupied by the Oriental is still a parking lot.
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
located at 828 SE Grand Street in the East Portland commercial district of Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. Built in 1927 the Oriental was a 2,038 seat movie palace
Movie palace
A movie palace is a term used to refer to the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opened every year between 1925 and 1930.There are three building types in particular which can be subsumed...
designed by Lee Arden Thomas
Lee Arden Thomas
Lee Arden Thomas was an architect in Bend and Portland, Oregon, United States. He graduated in 1907 from Oregon Agricultural College . He completed many projects in Bend, often partenering with local architect Hugh Thompson...
and Albert Mercier. The building's exterior was in the Italian Renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
style. The interior had an "almost surreal appearance" created by interior designer Adrien Alex Voisin. It was built by George Warren Weatherly. Demolished in 1970, the theater was located next to the Weatherly Building
Weatherly Building
The Weatherly Building in Portland, Oregon is a 12-story commercial office building. It was built in 1926 by ice cream businessman George Warren Weatherly...
, which remains standing.
Architecture and construction
Walter Eugene Tebbetts is listed as "the promoter who persuaded Weatherly to build a theatre," and was the first lessee and manager of the theater. Tebbetts previously managed the Italian Opera House in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
before arriving in Portland around 1909, after which he ran the Empire Theatre and a series of movie theaters, including the Hollywood Theatre. Tebbetts presumably visited the East Indies
East Indies
East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...
while travelling abroad in the late 1920s, and wanted a theatre designed to look like an East Indian temple.
Thomas and Mercier were chosen for their "association with East Portland" and their previous theatre design experience with the Bagdad Theater in Portland, McDonald Theatre
McDonald Theatre
McDonald Theatre is a theater and music venue in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Opened in 1925 as a movie house, the building was converted to a theater for performing arts, and is still in business...
in Eugene
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
, and the Egyptian Theatre
Egyptian Theatre (Coos Bay, Oregon)
The Egyptian Theatre is an historic movie theatre in Coos Bay, Oregon, United States. It was originally built as a garage, and was converted to a theatre in 1925...
in Coos Bay
Coos Bay, Oregon
Coos Bay is a city located in Coos County, Oregon, United States, where the Coos River enters Coos Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The city borders the city of North Bend, and together they are often referred to as one entity called either Coos Bay-North Bend or the Bay Area...
. They moved into the Weatherly building upon its completion. The building cost was "variously reported between $300,000 and $500,000." The general contractor of the building was Robertson, Hay, and Wallace. While under construction, the project was called the "Crystal Ice & Storage Co. Office & Theatre Building."
Groundbreaking began on March 21, 1927, and was completed by December 31, 1927.
The building was designed and built at the same time as the neighboring Weatherly Building. The exterior design matched the Weatherly Building, and heat was supplied from it.
Design and appointment
The Oriental utilized Asian influences from IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Indochina
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...
, and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and included "columns on each side of the screen", said to be based on the Temple of Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu,...
in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. There was a huge stylized face over the proscenium arch , "which had a wide open mouth baring fangs and eyes lit by red lightbulbs that would glow demonically before a show began" and "on the side walls and over the arch were life-sized plaster elephants, as well as apes, fishes, and mythological creatures, seemingly ready to pounce off the wall."
The lobby
Lobby (room)
A lobby is a room in a building which is used for entry from the outside. Sometimes referred to as a foyer or an entrance hall.Many office buildings, hotels and skyscrapers go to great lengths to decorate their lobbies to create the right impression....
and mezzanine
Mezzanine (architecture)
In architecture, a mezzanine or entresol is an intermediate floor between main floors of a building, and therefore typically not counted among the overall floors of a building. Often, a mezzanine is low-ceilinged and projects in the form of a balcony. The term is also used for the lowest balcony in...
were decorated with Hindu deities and "the main staircase leading to the balcony was flanked by a pair of huge dragons," while the auditorium was topped by a vast dome, lit indirectly by 2400 light bulbs, as well as a 2000 pounds (907.2 kg) "tree-sized Far Eastern style chandelier" including 3000 light bulbs in seven colors, costing $7000. The asbestos
Asbestos
Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...
drop curtain was blue with gold fringes and tassels and included a hand-painted royal procession scene, with "towering snow-capped mountains in the background [and] a misty blue apparition of the seated Buddha
Buddha
In Buddhism, buddhahood is the state of perfect enlightenment attained by a buddha .In Buddhism, the term buddha usually refers to one who has become enlightened...
." The Historic American Building Survey noted the "remarkably early extensive use of neon lighting" in the sign and sheet-metal marquee.
Music was provided by a $50,000 Wurlitzer
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to simply as Wurlitzer, was an American company that produced stringed instruments, woodwinds, brass instruments, theatre organs, band organs, orchestrions, electronic organs, electric pianos and jukeboxes....
235 Special 3-manual 13-rank organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
on an ascending platform, a full orchestra pit
Orchestra pit
An orchestra pit is the area in a theater in which musicians perform. Orchestral pits are utilized in forms of theatre that require music or in cases when incidental music is required...
on another ascending platform. The Wurlitzer was panned for being "never clearly audible from many of the nearly 5000 seats underneath the balcony", and for being difficult to hear for the organist. Knabe concert grand pianos were used in the orchestra and on stage, as well as a Knabe-Ampico grand player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
in the smoking room. The spacious stage was "large enough to accommodate the biggest stage shows of the day." There were also "luxurious lounges, smoking rooms and even a nursery in its basement". The nursery was called the "Kiddie Circus". It changed to a movies-only format by the 1940s "and lost its towering vertical marquee in favor of a more modest marquee not long afterwards", but remained a city showplace for years, and was used in the mid-1960s for concerts on its "mighty Wurlitzer".
Theatre operation
The grand opening included "An Atmospheric Prologue", and silent filmSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
s The Girl from Everywhere and The Moon of Israel. Portland mayor George Luis Baker dedicated the theatre, proclaiming he had "seen more expensive houses, but never a more beautiful one." Shows initially cost 25 cents for matinees, 35 cents for evenings.
The theatre upgraded to a sound system for talking pictures by 1930, perhaps earlier, as it won a bronze award for acoustics and sound systems from Will H. Hays
Will H. Hays
William Harrison Hays, Sr. , was the namesake of the Hays Code for censorship of American films, chairman of the Republican National Committee and U.S. Postmaster General from 1921 to 1922....
's Exhibitors Herald-World that year. The Oriental advertised "WHERE THE SOUND IS BETTER" on their marquee in neon after winning the award.
Aside from independent operators, the theatre was leased to Evergreen Theatres in 1935, the Rainier Theatre Corporation/Fox-West Coast Theatre Company by 1940. While it "had a history of proving burdensome to independent operators", the theatre was leased to the City of Portland for 2.5 years in 1965. During this lease, Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...
appeared with the Portland Symphony Orchestra
Portland Symphony Orchestra
The Portland Symphony Orchestra, established in 1923 in Portland, Maine, is a fully professional symphony that is recognized as being one of the top orchestras of its size in the country. The orchestra performs a wide variety of concerts, frequently featuring guest artists, at the Merrill...
on February 28, 1966,. It returned to showing films after the lease expired.
Fate
Lobbying to save the theatre began by at least 1959, and after Clayton Weatherly died in May 1969, the heirs decided to sell, despite a "premium lease" offer that was made.Everything inside the theatre was auctioned off, with the Wurlitzer going to the Organ Grinder Restaurant, who later upgraded their console, sending the Oriental Theatre organ console to Uncle Milt's Pizza on Grand Blvd in Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver, Washington
Vancouver is a city on the north bank of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington. Incorporated in 1857, it is the fourth largest city in the state with a 2010 census population of 161,791 as of April 1, 2010...
. Uncle Milt's Pizza closed in 1999, the organ-facaded building being sold to Rite Aid
Rite Aid
Rite Aid is a drugstore chain in the United States and a Fortune 500 company headquartered in East Pennsboro Township, Pennsylvania, near Camp Hill. Rite Aid is the largest drugstore chain on the East Coast and the third largest drugstore chain in the U.S....
, who abandoned plans to build a drugstore there. The location is now a Lord's Gym Christian "sports outreach center". Some of the plasterwork went to the Robin Hood Theatre in Sherwood, Oregon
Sherwood, Oregon
Sherwood is a city in Washington County, Oregon, United States. Located in the southeast corner of the county, it is a residential community in the Tualatin Valley southwest of Portland. The population was 11,791 at the 2000 census. The 2006 estimate is 16,115 residents...
, which was being rebuilt and was subsequently renamed the Sherwood Oriental Theatre.
The Oriental Theatre was demolished in February or April 1970, making room for parking at the Weatherly Building. It was lamented as an "amazing old theater was tragically demolished to make way for another parking lot, an irreplaceable loss for the city of Portland". As of 2009, the space formerly occupied by the Oriental is still a parking lot.
External links
- Oriental Theatre, Portland, Oregon information and pictures on the Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society website
- Portland theaters website with old photos (bottom of page)