Olympic Theatre (1882)

The Olympic Theatre Building presented a tall, symmetrical front on South Broadway: five ranks of arch-topped window bays, grouped in sets of three, rose above ground-floor storefronts to a heavy bracketed cornice and an ornamental pedimented parapet with corner finials and raised lettering reading OLYMPIC THEATRE BUILDING. A vertical sign spelling SAINT JAMES HOTEL ran down the building's central bay. At street level, canvas awnings sheltered the Olympic Drug Store, J. Plagnt & Son, and Theo. Brinkman, flanking a recessed theater entrance marked by a pair of ornamental cast-iron lamp standards.

An earlier Olympic Theatre was built on this site in 1866 (one source gives 1867) and operated until 1881, when its owner decided to replace it with an updated building on the same site. The New Olympic Theatre opened in 1882 and hosted plays and operas. The same building housed the Saint James Hotel on its upper floors, with ground-floor storefronts including the Olympic Drug Store, J. Plagnt & Son, and Theo. Brinkman. Actress E. J. Phillips, who had performed at the earlier Olympic as part of Ben DeBar's stock company, recalled staying at the Southern Hotel -- located at Fourth and Walnut, a few blocks away -- because it stood "just opposite" the theater, in an 1893 letter describing a return engagement there. The Saint James Hotel closed in 1916. No source located in this research documents when the New Olympic Theatre itself closed or when the building was demolished.