According to A. J. Mullally, the original owner/developer of what’s now Lake House Condominium along Madison Park’s lakefront, several of The Orpheum’s chandeliers (including the one still adorning Lake House’s original building) are still to be found around Seattle. The one anchoring the original Lake House Apartments (now Lake House Condominium’s Building A of the two-building complex), upon its debut in 1968 (41 years after the opening of The Orpheum Theatre) has been at its second home four years longer than it was at The Orpheum!

Orpheum by the numbers –

Any discussion of Variety Vaudeville Theater in American history must certainly include the name Orpheum. It is virtually synonymous with the mixed-program “clean” houses, which began in the nineteenth century musichall and ended in the twentieth century moviehouse. Orpheum was everywhere, from coast to coast, and Seattle was no exception. Over the years, six Seattle theaters bore the Orpheum name.

500 3rd Avenue
Mention The Coliseum Theater to most Seattle residents and they are quick to respond, “Banana Republic.” The first Coliseum was in fact located on the southeast corner of 3rd and James. Cornerstones of early Seattle theater, Sullivan and Considine opened this vaudeville house in 1907, which was re-named Orpheum 1908-1911, and closed for good in 1913.

919 3rd Avenue
Another Sullivan and Considine establishment, this Orpheum opened in 1911. Owners changed and the name moved in 1923. The theater on the southwest corner of 3rd and Madison was boarded for years and served as a “colored” USO during WWII before it was razed in 1954 for a car park. The side street entrance was located at 217 Madison.

1932 2nd Avenue
Seattle’s grand lady of theaters, John Cort’s palace on the southeast corner of 2nd and Virginia opened December 28, 1907, and was home to Orpheum Vaudeville for a number of years before Moore was dropped from the name 1923-1927. Along with the Moore Hotel which surrounds it, The Moore Theater is the sole survivor from this list.

504-506 Stewart Street
The last hurrah for Orpheum in Seattle was the grand palace designed by B. Marcus Priteca at 5th and Westlake. This theater opened as The New Orpheum on August 28, 1927 and survived the demise of vaudeville a few years later. Operating as a movie theater and concert hall for most of its existence, this spectacular Spanish Renaissance tribute to the height of movie palace opulence was demolished in 1967 to make way for the Washington Plaza (Weston) Hotel.

Two other theaters bearing the Orpheum name were unrelated to the chain.

200 2nd Avenue
Back in the day, our forefathers kept the seedier parts of society, theaters, saloons and “social clubs” south of Yesler. This box-house on the southeast corner of Second Avenue and Washington operated as The Orpheum from 1896-1900.

1010 2nd Avenue
Located on the east side of Second Avenue between Madison and Seneca, this diminutive vaudeville theater operated as The Orpheum 1904-1908.

Seattle theater manager J. P. Howe was the first to bring the Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit to town, booking two separate bills at the Seattle Theater (3rd and Cherry) in April 1902.
Prominent Seattle theater manager John Considine also booked Orpheum Vaudeville at The Star Theater (1st and Madison) around 1905. Considine’s other Seattle theater at that time was the second Orpheum (1010 2nd Avenue) but ironically, it never presented Orpheum Vaudeville.

I once heard a demolition story involving the New Orpheum (5th and Virginia). Workers hammered away at the mezzanine for over a week, but it would not fall. One day, as they enjoyed their lunch break, it came down with a thundering crash while everyone was out of the building.

I wasn’t going to pass up such an opportunity, especially since the play was “Hamlet” and starred Richard Burton, and I had been listening to selections from this production all summer on a record my mom had picked up through her membership in the Columbia Record Club.

That Wednesday afternoon marked a thrilling encounter with spoken language, It wasn’t merely the soaring cadences of Burton’s soliloquies, but the energy level he set for the entire cast. Even though I had listened several times to scenes from this production, I was unprepared for the ecstasies of verbal flight it offered. I was also blind to the physical shortcomings of Burton’s performance, and the misconception that acting was a matter of a sonorous voice was planted so deep within me that I was never able to uproot it. As a result I was never any good as an actor, even though I subsequently spent many undeserved hours trying to justify my presence on the stage.

When my English teacher awarded my report on the film with five extra credit points, I asked her if I could earn some more credit by memorizing some of the speeches. She answered with a delighted yes, and was somewhat shocked when, the next day after classes I stopped by her classroom and delivered letter-perfect imitations of Burton’s readings of “Too Too Solid Flesh,” “Now I Am Alone,” and “To Be Or Not To Be.” Perhaps I should have relieved her amazement at my feats of memorization by confessing that I had been spouting these soliloquies about the house for several weeks, but I needed all the extra credit I could get just to lift my grade up to a C.

excerpt from “Cinema Penitentiary”