Empress Theatre

A three-story front of light brick with Classical Revival trim: a central bay of tall round-arched second-story windows framed by pilasters and carved mascaron keystones, beneath a modillioned cornice, with diamond-patterned brick insets on the flanking bay. A deep scalloped marquee lettered "EMPRESS," edged in bulbs, projected over the entrance, and a tall vertical blade sign rose above the roofline on a steel frame. A recessed lobby with a ticket booth and poster cases opened at the sidewalk.

The Empress Theatre opened on February 2, 1913 as a vaudeville house, designed by Clymer & Drischler and seating about 1,476. It turned to motion pictures in November 1926 and was renamed the Midtown Theatre, then the Midtown-Empress in 1929, before returning to the Empress name in 1933, when the Ansell Brothers ran it for second-run films. Between 1952 and 1956 it housed a resident stock company; its last theatrical production, "This Is It," closed in February 1956. A theatre-and-television school and then a church used the building afterward, and it was demolished in the fall of 1970.