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Overview

Th short-lived Empress Theatre #3 operated on the northeast corner of Market Street and Barnes Avenue between 1922 and 1925. It was preceded and succeeded by an Empress Theatre that stood on the soutwest corner of Market Street and Tallman Avenue. The first Seattle theatre to be known as the "Empress" operated in the city's Downtown at 1022 2nd Avenue and was listed as primarily a vaudeville house in the R.L. Polk and Company's Seattle City Directory, 1915, p. 1882.)

Building History

The G & G Theatre Company, owned Ballard's Empress Theatre in 1920, along with the Majestic Theatre in Ballard, College Theatre in Fremont, College Playhouse in the University District, and a new theatre located near the corner of NE 45th Street and 14th Avenue NE (later renamed Brooklyn Avenue), the Neptune. Donald Geddes, the president of the couple's company partnered with his wife, Myrtle, who served as secretary/treasurer, incorporated the G & G Theatre Company in 01/1920 for $500,000. According to the Seattle Timesof 01/25/1920, They arrived in Seattle in 1916: "Mr. and Mrs. Geddes have been actively associated with the motion picture business for seven years. After three years of exceptional success in Montana they came to Seattle and purchased the College Playhouse, which was in a precarious condition as to patronage. Under their management it has been made one of the most successful of Seattle's neighborhood theatres. Later they acquired the Empress at Ballard and quickly made it a distinctive house." (See "New Theatre Company Formed Buys Neighborhood Movies," Seattle Times, 01/25/1920, p. 6.) The Geddes's theatre in the University District was called "Ye College Playhouse" and it stood at 4322 14th Avenue NE. (See R.L. Polk's Seattle City Directory, 1918, p. 95.) The article also indicated that aside from her other duties, Myrtle focused on the musical entertainment at the theatres, as she had studied the subject at the University of Chicago.

Associated with the couple, was a lawyer, Harry Sigmond, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, who had arrived in the city in 1912. Sigmond also functioned as the first General Counsel of the Northwest Film Board of Trade, an exhibitor's lobbying group. Later in the 1920s, the Empress Theatre was owned by the Seattle exhibitors, Claude Jensen and John von Herberg.

According to R.L. Polk Company's Seattle City Directory, the Empress Theatres #2 and #3 operated in Ballard in two places: in 1918-1919, it operated on the southwest corner of Market Street and Tallman Avenue. The Empress Theatre did not get listed in the city directories of 1920 or 1921. A notable recession occurred nationally in 1919-1921, and so this economic slowdown could have contributed to the Empress's closure. Between 1922 and 1925, it stood on the northeast corner of Market Street and Barnes Avenue. In 1926, however, it returned to its first location, on the southeast corner of Market Street and Tallman Avenue and remained in business at this address until 1928. (See R.L. Polk and Company's Seattle, Washington, City Directory, 1926, p. 1719 and R.L. Polk and Company's Seattle, Washington, City Directory, 1928, p. 1960.)

Demolished

PCAD id: 10938