OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Google Streetview (new tab)

The Alcazar Theatre opened for business as a box house, a combined bar and theatre, in which barmaids also doubled as performers. This was a small venue--measuring 33 by 45 feet--suitable in scale for a sparsely-settled lumber town, Most box house theatres in nearby Seattle, WA, were wiped out by the serious Depression of 1893, and all of the early vaudeville circuits either collapsed or greatly cut back operations around Puget Sound between 1893-1896. Prosperity returned to the area during the Klondike Gold Rush after 1897, but subsequent activism by religious, temperance and women's groups helped to close down the morally questionable box houses by 1900, forcing owners to turn them into theatres catering to mass audiences. The auditorium in this theatre c. 1900 seated 350, and was a stop for circuits into the 1920s. After the death of vaudeville in the later 1920s, the building was used as a garage, and, still later, as various junk and antique stores.

The Alcazar Theatre occupied a gable-front building which featured a false-front on its street facade. A large arch was placed centrally on the second floor that was flanked by single double-hung windows on both sides. The first floor also featured a large arched main entrance, balanced on either side by an inset doorway and a window. The building had a wood-frame that has miraculously lasted since the 1890s.

PCAD id: 18560