Kings Theatre

The Kings comprised a large indoor auditorium in a Neo-Classical block on Kingshighway together with an adjoining open-air airdrome for summer. The airdrome was a walled outdoor auditorium filling a mid-block lot: rows of curved-back folding seats stepped down a shallow slope toward a small stucco screen house with a flat proscenium, bounded by low walls of coursed rubble stone and a lamp-topped balustrade hung with planters. Blank-windowed commercial buildings rose along either side, closing the lot off from the surrounding streets.

The Kings Theatre opened in January 1912 at 818 North Kingshighway, designed by F.A. Duggan. Its indoor auditorium seated about 1,370, and with the adjoining open-air airdrome, used in the warm months, the combined houses could hold roughly 3,600 — said to be the largest theater capacity in the city at the time. It opened as a Loew's vaudeville house, added motion pictures, and dropped vaudeville in 1923; a Wurlitzer pipe organ was installed that April. Famous Players and the Skouras brothers were among its later operators. The Kings closed in May 1929, and the auditorium was demolished in 1935, though its street front survived for a time as retail space.